The Green Ashikabi
by mongodatroll
Summary: Bruce Banner has befouled the glory of the more wicked Asgardians one time too many, and they have finally decided on a plan that might work. Rather than try to trap him in a cage, trap him in a place where the penalty for leaving will be greater than the penalty for staying, and then tie that penalty to his soul. Will be M before I am done. Early chapters will be tamer though.
1. Chapter 1

The Green Ashikabi

(It should go without saying that I don't own any of the following characters or likenesses thereof, but just in case you is real dumb, I don't. There, I said it.)

Ten years of hiding, skulking about the shadows and then when found an explosion of violence and rage so fierce it would inevitably scar the very earth upon which he struggled. Ten years of trying to make a better life for himself and for others. Ten years of attempting to fill the vast emptiness of his regret with something he could be proud of.

Ten years of strife until one of his many enemies finally found a way to be rid of him forever.

The mocking smile was delivered with precision from between perfect red lips framed by golden locks and a green tiara, then the ground under him lit up with an intensity equivalent to staring at the sun on a bright summer day. Burning his eyes shut, he barely notices the sensation when he falls through the floor and blacks out.

Waking up with a pounding headache and no idea where he lay was sadly not too unusual for him. Feeling otherwise comfortable when it happened was something new though. Without opening his eyes he can tell that the room is dim, and the bed comfortable but firm. The smell of clean linen and ammonia based cleaning supplies are both faint in the air, and there is a constant rustling of movement and soft conversation from somewhere nearby. It feels like a hospital.

Which means it feels like bad news. Getting to his feet he looks around for his clothing, but the office supply box at the foot of the bed that contains his belongings is filled with essentially burn damaged rags and a wallet. As he is looking through the wallet to see if anything is missing, the door to the room opens and a young Asian woman walks in, wearing the scrubs that mark her clearly as a medical professional of some sort. She startles when she sees him, the hair that had made it out from under her tight cap swaying as she jerks upright and grabs the door. Yammering at him in Japanese spoken at the breakneck speeds of an auctioneer she dashes forward to hold him up. Treating him as though she expects him to collapse at any second and trying to guide him back to the bed while calling out toward the door for assistance.

He tries to proclaim himself healthy using what little Japanese he knows but the woman is having none of it, though she does switch to broken but understandable English when he starts talking to her.

"You need lay down, you unwell. Doc be soon to see you, lay down now."

Not quite certain how to respond to her obvious concern without giving away far more than he was willing to at this time, he lets himself be led back to the bed and lays upon it. She spends a few minutes reattaching some sticky monitor pads to his arm and chest that he had torn off when he got up, and then moves about in the room checking his blood pressure, his monitors, and then repacking the rags at the end of the bed into the box with a slight smirk that seems to ask 'Where were you going to go wearing these scraps anyway, Hmmm?'

When the doctor arrives a few minutes later he is an older gentleman in a white coat, carrying a clipboard with a stethoscope draped around his neck. His salt and pepper hair and stubble indicate some advanced age, yet the open smile on his face would lead one to believe that his years in medicine had not yet hardened him.

Apparently having heard either the nurse or her patient speaking, he walks in the room speaking very good, if still accented, English. "So, you are awake! So good to see! Now we just need to know who you are and who gets the bill for your care these past weeks."

As he drops that bombshell, the doctor checks the monitors and lays a clipboard and pen down on the bed. Looking at the paperwork by his side, it looks like they had done a complete workup on him at some point, and then having decided that he was in reasonable health if unresponsive and comatose, they had chosen to keep him here for observation at least until the authorities had managed to got a positive ID on him or he awoke.

"Weeks? Pardon, Doctor, but how long was I out? I mean, I feel fine. While we are at it, where am I anyway?"

"I am sorry, my name is Dr. Okakita, and you are?"

"Bruce. Now what was this you said about weeks?"

"Well, Bruce. Let us see here. You were brought in after having been found out in the countryside in late September, so that would be a little over eight weeks. Frankly, I am amazed you lasted that long on minimal life support. With nobody to authorize the treatment we were unfortunately limited as to what we were allowed to do for you. You really should start carrying a contact card in your wallet for next of kin and such, especially if you are going to choose to not carry identification. As for where you are, this is a private hospital in Tokyo. We took you in after the local public facilities were planning to stop treatment, as a favor to local law enforcement which had wanted to know more about your circumstances."

Eight weeks? Eight weeks he was out? That makes him think. Since the accident so long ago the idea that he could be unconscious for that long seems laughable. The Tokyo thing is even more ridiculous. Last he remembered he was in New York eating questionable sushi with Stark and turning down another offer of full time employment. Then there was a bomb. The anger. Now, well. Whatever this is.

The doctor is giving a slight chuckle as he finishes checking his monitors. "If it makes you feel any better about the eight weeks you lost in our care, I can tell you that your being here gave a young woman eight more weeks to live. You have a very rare blood type Mr. Bruce, and we borrowed a bit to help a patient in critical condition a few hours ago. It is too bad that she likely won't make it to see next summers cherry blossoms even with your help, but even still I call it a minor miracle that we had a donor here when she went critical and we had to operate."

His blood goes still as his heart skips a beat. "You gave somebody a transfusion of my blood? Mine? Oh god no." He starts getting back up again, tearing off the monitors. "I need to see her now, and I need clothes to do it. Can you help me?"

"There is no problem, Bruce. We have checked you for literally everything over the last few weeks trying to determine what was keeping you unconscious. Other than the likely concussion causing you to not wake up you are possibly the healthiest person in the city. In fact, we double checked for any kind of illness indicators twice because to find somebody over the age of six months that has seemingly had no illnesses was too difficult to believe. If you want to object on legal grounds under consent laws, you can do that. But since you would have died without our care I have faith that a jury would.."

"I am NOT healthy, and now neither is she. Can you get me some clothes or am I just going to use a sheet?"

"Calm yourself Bruce, we can get you some scrubs in a few minutes. She is also in long term care, so she is just up the hall. We can be there in a few minutes."

Yes. Calm. Need to be calm. Deep breaths. In with the good air, out with the bad air. The doctor calls out to the nurses station to get some clothes for the patient, and in a few minutes Bruce is putting on lime green pants with an elastic band over a pair of boxers that seem to be covered in Pokemon. Baby blue slipper socks and a bright orange scrub style shirt to finish his now absurd style. With that the doctor has an orderly come in with a wheelchair, as while Bruce seems to be getting around OK, he explains that for liability reasons the policy in the ward is that until removed from long term care no patients are allowed to have the opportunity to hurt themselves. Grumbling a bit about the need for haste, Bruce gets in the chair. A few minutes later they pull up to the young woman's room, one "Chiho Hidaka."

Getting out of the chair in direct opposition to what he has been told, Bruce stands and glances briefly at the chart on the door then enters the room. The lights are dim. It isn't terribly late, but it is the third week in November. As such the sun has gone down, and the blinds are drawn. In the darkness Bruce can see the young woman. She looks young. She would probably still be in high school if she wasn't terminal. Her monitor is still going, and according to it she has a strong pulse. A very strong pulse.

Bruce is a physicist. That is where he took his profession, that is where he made his mistake. In more than one way it has made him what he is today. But it isn't the only doctorate he has. Listing everything he has formal training in would take hours, and the hobbies he has had to take up in the last ten years would take even longer. But in that mess of knowledge is an understanding of medicine that makes him possibly one of the top fifty minds on the planet as a general practitioner and within a narrow field, a very narrow field... The only guy to go to.

He knows how to read these instruments. He knew how to read the chart on the door before he came in. He knows that hundred pound little girls that have been sick and dying for years and have just recently undergone exploratory surgery to remove some form of necrosis caused by a combination of illness and an allergic reaction to a new medication should not result in a heart that is beating with the power of a pile driver and the speed of a jackhammer. He knows that under normal circumstances the woman would have looked over when the door opened as she is obviously awake, her bed in a very slightly raised position and her eyes wide open. He knows that only a few hours out of surgery, she should still be asleep from the drugs they would have used to knock her out. But even if all that were not the case, the look of fear as she stares at the far wall and silently mouths a scream would have been a good indicator that something was wrong, and the way her hands were gripping the steel bed rails and slowly crushing them was definitely the clincher. Damn it. Damn it all to hell.

The doctor seeing this rushes into the room and goes to flip the lights on, but Bruce grabs his hand and in a desperate whisper says "No! Don't, don't startle her. Move slowly and carefully. Stay out of reach. You don't yet understand how bad this could be. Send somebody for a radiation detector. There should be one in radiology for testing the equipment. Go, I need to know how bad the exposure is."

The doctor pales. "Radiation? What radiation? What kind of radiation could do that?"

"The worst kind, doc. Now go get it. I am going to try to calm her down."

With that the doctor leaves the room and the ever pragmatic orderly shuts the door to peer in through the window.

Bruce slowly moves toward the bed, making soft comforting sounds as he does. The girl doesn't move her head but he sees that her eyes have started to track him. He tries to stumble through an explanation in Japanese.

"Pain will pass. Temporary. Stay calm. Pain will pass. Doctors made mistake, but pain will pass. Calm. Be calm."

The poor girl whimpers and then, mercifully, passes out. Her heart rate slows to nearly nothing, then picks back up to something approaching normal after a minute.

Bruce pulls a stool up next to her bed, pries her right hand off of the bed rail and shakes his head in despair at the deep dents she has left in it, puts his fingers on her wrist for her pulse, and looks out the window into the black. The clock is now running. Somewhere, somebody is talking about this. Sooner or later that talk is going to reach the wrong ears. He had to get out of here, and now he had to get her out of here as well. Soon. But he had a little time. As the minutes slip by waiting for the doctor to return he finds his eyelids drooping. It had been a hell of a day already, and he has been awake for less than an hour when he nods off.

He wakes up when her hand moves. Cracking his eyes open, he sees her trying to remove her hand from his grasp without waking him up. He releases her and says "Sorry, Miss. I must have fallen asleep checking your pulse."

"I assumed as much. Who are you? I have been here a long time and thought I knew all of the staff here. Please use English, I think my English is better than your Japanese." She looks nervous, but not outright afraid. Bruce figures that she has probably had to see more than her fair share of specialists. For a girl this young to have to deal with it being normal to have strange men where she sleeps is fairly heartbreaking for him.

"Well, Miss, that is kind of a long story. I will give you the short answer. I am another patient from about fifty feet up the hall. Name is Bruce. They tell me I was unconscious for something like two months and just woke up tonight sometime. The problem is that they didn't have a chance to ask me before they used me as a blood donor for your surgery earlier, or I could have told them that it was a bad idea."

"Why, Bruce-san? Am I now infected with something new? Do I have the AIDS?" She looks resigned, as though she isn't quite sure what more the world could throw at her.

"Umm.. No. No disease. I have a... Lets call it a toxin, in my blood. The good news is that barring complications with the toxin itself, there is a reasonable chance that you will start feeling better soon if you haven't already. There isn't much in the viral or bacterial world that can survive this toxin. The bad news is that the complications you can run into can be, well, rather severe."

"What complications are those?"

Bruce hangs his head and starts listing off the most likely candidates. "Well, umm... The most likely candidates are going to be severe mood swings, hemophilia, toxic shock, a sickness brought about by the nature of the toxin itself as it is radioactive, organ necrosis and failure, nerve damage, an incredibly high chance for cancerous growths, internal bleeding, severe muscle spasms that hit with enough force to cause the brittle bones that it can also form to actually break, and of course if it wasn't already obvious, death." As she turns even more pale at the thought of all of this he leans in close and looks her in the eyes, giving him his first look into the green within green eyes she now has, even the whites being slightly tinted with only the pupil itself unchanged. Then he whispers "But since you survived the first few hours, that isn't likely how your case is going to go. Be calm. Focus on staying calm. Can you do that?" Her eyes wide, she nods. "I will try, Bruce-san."

"OK. I want you to stay calm, and look at your bed rails." Her look of shock is almost funny as she slowly puts her hands back down on the rails and finds that the imprint exactly fits her hands.

"This Toxin will manifest differently in anyone who survives the initial exposure. So I can't tell for sure yet what all it is doing to you. But I am betting that you are strong enough to walk out of here and honestly, we both need to leave before somebody in a position to make our lives miserable over this gets wind of it."

"But, my treatments. I need them to live, don't I?" Bruce slowly shakes his head. "There is no normal treatment for your disease. All the things I saw on your chart were dealing with symptoms. But regardless I think you will find that barring complications with the toxin, staying healthy in a conventional sense won't be an issue for you anymore. I am going to put up the privacy screen, can you get dressed?"

She seems to be at a loss for words, then as she goes to get up she instead lifts herself off the bed with arm strength alone, by holding the rails. Then with a tenuous smile, straightening her body while pushing away from the bed until the sheet falls over her hands and she appears to be hovering over it.

"You know, I think maybe I can."

Bruce puts up the privacy screen for her and then goes to the door to look out the glass in it. He sees what he feared. A rather severe looking man on either side of the door and two more across the hall. At least the two across the hall seem to be armed with pistols of some kind, their shoulder holsters obvious to anybody that knows what to look for. Probably waiting for somebody else to show up. One of them nods his way and motions down the hall to somebody that Bruce cannot see. Damn it. Locking the door and then shoving a chair under the handle will buy a minute or two.

"Chiho, there are people with guns watching the door. I don't think they are here to sell us girl scout cookies, so this might be a rougher ride than I thought"

The rustling of cloth from the other side of the privacy screen stops. "Do you think they would hurt us, Bruce-san?"

"I think they would try, and I don't think it would be a good idea to find out if they would succeed." Glancing out the window, he says "We are only on the second floor. That is doable. Are you dressed yet?"

At this point someone is trying the door handle and seconds later he can hear the jingle of keys from the hallway.

"Yes, Bruce-san. I am dressed. What is "Doable?"

Bruce slides the window open and pushes the privacy screen aside, seeing Chiho in a white and pink ruffled dress, and sliding on a baby blue puffy coat over it from the box at the foot of her bed. She grabs her purse and phone, tosses the charger in a pocket, and looks at him expectantly tapping the toes of her her right tennis shoe covered feet against the floor.

"Now, I jump out the window and you jump right after me as soon as my feet hit the ground. Can you do that?"

She looks a little dubious, but says "Yes?"

"Good." And with that, he goes to the window, climbs out, lowers himself as far as possible, and drops the last eight feet or so, rolling on the grass and getting back up immediately. "Now Jump!"

She almost doesn't. Bruce-san seems like a nice man, and he was right that she feels better, stronger, than she has ever before. But it is still difficult to completely forget years and years of doing what the doctors say and staying under their care. In fact, had it not been for a strange man bellowing at her to stop and the sound of breaking glass. Then followed by a fateful gunshot that tried to bury itself in her shoulder, causing her to jump in fear and away from the sound... she might not have. But she did.

Bruce caught her easily enough, she weighed almost nothing and the drop was a mere ten feet. The force does knock him down to a knee but he gets back up, throws her over a shoulder, and runs into the night as though the hounds of hell were barking at his heels.

His slipper socks sliding on the occasional patch of frost.

A few hours later after Chiho had used some debit card to buy them a couple of backpacks and changes of clothes from a late night department store, they made a quick trip to a public bath and spent a lot of time trying to get her used to her new strength. While she may or may not develop further, getting a handle on how to reign in extra power for somebody that is used to having to strain mightily to do even little things is a bit of a priority. Once these important tasks are done they find a little hole in the wall overnight cafe and finally have a chance to sit down and talk a bit over a fast food meal of some kind of noodle bowl in an almost completely deserted place. Chiho is having a hard time understanding why the bullet she had taken in the shoulder as she made her jump had flattened itself against the shoulder blade and then been pushed out by the healing tissues. She was being rather stubborn about getting a straight answer. The truly unfortunate thing being that he doesn't know what kind of answers he can give. Japan is a bit off the beaten path for the super hero jet set, but he has spent the last half hour going through a newspaper page by page While eating and trying to stall this very conversation, and to see absolutely nothing in it at all that sounds like it might wear a cape and tights on the weekends is really making him wonder if that psycho bitch just knocked him out and shipped him to Japan, or if she had some kind of more permanent solution. It wouldn't be the first time he had been forced to deal with alternate dimensional garbage. Just potentially the most recent.

"Yes, Bruce-san. But why? Why are my eyes this color? Why did the bullet squish and the wound close? These things are not normal, so why? Why did this happen to me?"

"I told you, it was in the blood transfusion. It is effecting you different than me, but if it doesn't kill you outright it usually does something crazy with you. In you it seems to be ratcheting up your strength and ability to recover from damage, mostly. Some durability gain. I will need to see you a few times over the next couple of weeks just to be on hand in case any kind of bad side effects show up, but considering the shape you were in before I think we can call this a win overall. Just don't ever go to a doctor again if you can help it. That is always where the trouble starts."

"It effects Bruce-san differently? What does it do to Bruce-san?"

Bruce shakes his head. "If I get angry, or hurt, or scared. If anything happens to make my adrenaline pump or my heart rate get above a certain point I change. Into..." He smiles slightly, though a tad pained. "An enormous green rage monster. Call it a Demon, or an Oni if you like. I lose most of my control, and things tend to get broken. All the things tend to get broken. I try to be pretty hands off and inconspicuous when I can so it doesn't happen."

Bruce glances out the window. Old habits, keeping an eye on his surroundings is just one of the many nervous tics he has picked up since that gamma bomb fiasco made him into a freak. Nobody of note, though there is a young girl out there across the street that is sitting against the side of a building, shivering with cold despite sitting directly under what looks to be a dryer vent. Dirty darkish blond hair unkempt, her clothing filthy and stained with blood in places. She stares in the window of the noodle place and Bruce could swear that he can see the drool forming on her gaunt cheeks.

"Hey, Chiho? Do you think that we could get a noodle bowl to go? I don't think that girl over there has had a break in a while and it would probably make her day. I will pay you back when I get something going on."

"Bruce-san, there can be no debts between us. You gave me back my life. For that I will be forever grateful. Even more, the card I am using is the one that contains the last bits of my trust fund, a fund I only still have because Bruce-san got me out of the hospital before it had all been depleted. As far as I can see, the money on it belongs to Bruce-san."

"Don't be silly. I didn't give you anything except a good chance that you will spend the rest of your life running away from people in lab coats."

"Maybe, Bruce-san. But I will be running, and that makes it better than yesterday!"

"Let me know in a year if you still feel that way kiddo. So, do you have any family you can stay with? I heard you on your phone in the dressing room." He holds his hands up, palms out. "I wasn't trying to listen in or anything, but I heard you talking and wanted to know if that meant you had somewhere to go. If we can get you there, I can stop by in a day or two and check on you. No pressure."

She looks a little nervous, but responds "Yes, I have my friend Uzume. She would take me in. But I don't know if she would want you to know where we would be."

"That's fair. But before I hand you off to her, we should set a place to meet in a few days that has the potential of a little privacy for an hour so I can check and make sure you are doing alright. If that is OK."

"Of course, Bruce-san. That would be very appreciated. Why don't you go get your friend in the cold while I make another call, and we can invite them in here to eat, since we are paying for food they may as well eat in the warmth of the restaurant."

"You know, Chiho, that is actually a really good idea. I will be right back."

Bruce walks toward the door shaking his head and indulging in a quick grin. The girl might not have a wicked bone in her body, but she was picking up the cloak and dagger quick enough. Getting him out of the way during her phone call was actually fairly encouraging. She might even survive what he had, albeit unintentionally, allowed to befall her. A quick jog across the street and he looks down on the poor girl in sympathy. She slowly looks up at him, unmoving other than her eyes and a slight tilt of her head. The steam from the dryer vent both warming and moistening her back, a circumstance that will no doubt cause her problems later. He opens his mouth, silently thanking the fates at the sheer number of trade shows he had been asked to attend in Japan. His Japanese isn't good, but he knows enough to be understood. Thankfully, most Japanese understand quite a bit of English. Between the two, being understood hasn't been too much of a problem so far. "So, hi there. My friend and I in the restaurant were wondering if you would like some food. Maybe get out of the cold for awhile and have a bite. Does that sound good?"

She looks up at him. This girl who might be as young as sixteen, certainly no older than eighteen, and sees a man who is obviously approaching forty. It doesn't seem to particularly matter to her as she stands up, shaking in the cold, and says "Number 95, Kuno. Thank you for your kindness."

"Yeah,I am Bruce. Follow me uh.. Kuno, and we will get you warmed up with some food in you." Bruce reaches out a hand to her, and when she holds out her own he takes it and starts leading her back across the street. "So, none of my business I suppose, but are you OK? I mean, do you have some place to stay? We could poke around for a woman's shelter or something on the wi-fi while we eat, it is way to cold to be out here all the time."

Kuno is a little confused. Happy for the warmth, the kindness, and the food. But confused. She feels like she is somehow missing something. She was told when she left the laboratories, before her stupid credit card had been stolen, before she spent all those nights sleeping on the streets and getting scratched up due to both where she was sleeping and her own lamentable clumsiness, she was told then that she would know her soul mate because he would be handsome, and kind. That she would love him. That she would stay with him forever, and together they would both be stronger then they could possibly be alone.

This older gentleman with the graying hair and average build, this man that could easily be old enough to be her father and barely even speaks the local language, is the first person who has been kind to her in the three months she has been lost in the city looking for that soul mate. Despite herself, she even feels good about this. When she reaches out her cold hand and puts it into his the warmth it brings is overwhelming. Because his hands seem to be impervious to the cold, she can practically see heat waves coming off of his exposed skin as though somehow the cold is afraid to get to close to him for fear of what he might do to it. Also though, the little hole in her soul that each day has been getting cut deeper and bloodier as she slowly started to give into despair that she would ever find her Ashikabi, her soul mate of the plan, has filled in. It has filled in to overflowing and she is already starting to look at him with new eyes. Seeing experience rather than age. A life of toil and hard work rather than just the rough hands that come with it. Someone compassionate and willing to be there for her. But at the same time, someone already trying to abdicate the life she now wanted with him to some faceless entity that would give her a place to sleep. So it was with a quizzical glance up at his unshaven face that she Responds, "Kuno has nowhere, Bruce-san."

She then follows him into the diner and the man behind the counter adds her meal to the tab, taking just a moment to slop it into a bowl and hand it over with a set of chopsticks. Then they walk over to the booth, and she climbs in first, next to the window. Bruce places her tray in front of her and sits down next to her.

"Chiho, this is Kuno. Kuno, Chiho." He looks at Chiho's phone. "Were you able to get in touch with anyone?"

"Yes, Bruce-san. She will be here soon, and we will talk about where to meet later then. Kuno, hmm? Why were you sitting out in the cold?"

Kuno sees this young woman this with unnaturally green eyes and makes a mistake that, really, anyone could make.

"Kuno is still looking, Chiho-san. Is Bruce-san your Ashikabi? What number are you? Kuno is 95." She then waits for an answer, still eating noodles like she hasn't eaten in weeks.

Chiho blushes and starts shaking her head, looking like she is getting ready to say something more but Bruce beats her to it, looking confused.

"If Ashikabi is another word for father, then no. We are just friends."

Kuno stops in mid slurp and her eyes shift over to him, opened wide as though she has just made a social blunder of some epic magnitude.

Chiho is starting to get a feeling about this and looks quite pointedly at Kuno, than jabs a finger at Bruce with one eyebrow raised. Kuno blushes and looks down, but her pinkie finger from the hand that is on the table moves the inch it would take to rest lightly against Bruce's arm, and the look of contentment that spreads through her, the way the stress in her shoulders seems to fade as she dips into the noodle bowl with her chopsticks again really tells Chiho all she needs to know. She looks at Bruce and shakes her head in wonder at the degree of complexity this will add to the equation.

"Bruce-san? Maybe it would be best if you and Kuno-san were to walk with Uzume and I for awhile when she gets here. She will need to explain some things I think."

Bruce is no fool, he understands what a finger point plus and eyebrow raise on one girl and a blush on the other means. He makes an effort to tactfully redirect what he is guessing some kind of attempt to secure a sugar daddy before it can get rolling. "So, Chiho, can we use your phone to try to find a shelter for Kuno while we are here?" He turns to Kuno. "I won't ask why you are on the street, since it is none of my business. But I would hate to see you get hurt out there while you are patching up whatever went wrong to put you there. Seems the least I can do is try to get you someplace safe before I need to go home."

Kuno has gone from lightly touching him with a finger to holding his pinkie tightly in her hand as though by force of will alone she could make him understand her need, and that this need is fueled by something more than material or even carnal desires. "Home, Bruce-san? Where is home?"

Bruce sighs. It isn't something that happens to him much anymore. Being on the wrong side of his thirties and moving around a lot he rarely has to deal with the direct results of being a decent human being. But it isn't the first time it has happened either. If you kick somebody long enough, they will either become a broken wreck of a human being or latch onto the first person that makes them feel something besides pain with the emotional strength of some kind of leech and Stockholm victim hybrid. It is sad, but really, hanging around with him is just exactly the last thing the poor girl needs.

"Well, back in the United States, of course. I don't sound like a local, do I?" He tries to chuckle to maybe drop the tension level but the look of abject horror on Kuno's face makes him stop.

Chiho tries to interject here as Kuno is looking like she is swinging right past desperation avenue and straight up drastic measures boulevard. "We can look into this later, Bruce-san, can we not just be pleasant for now? Please?"

Getting the distinct impression that there is a lot more going on here than he is currently aware of, he responds: "Yeah, sure. We can talk about it later if you like." He makes it a point to pull his hand away from Kuno and motions her to finish eating. "If you are going to be coming with us you had best eat up. Whoever Uzume is, she may not have time to wait around for you."

Hearing this, Kuno practically inhales what is left in her bowl, then leans into Bruce's side to feel him close while she waits. The warmth and contentment of merely being close to him drains most of the worries she had been stacking up away, and between that and the full belly it is only a few minutes before the tell tale sounds of the gentlest snores are heard. When she starts to slump forward, Bruce brings an arm around her and holds her to him so she doesn't smack her head against the table.

Chiho is looking at the scene oddly, her head cocked over a bit and a slightly satisfied smirk on her lips. "I think it will be a good thing, Bruce-san. Maybe for both of you."

He is about to respond when the door to the diner slams open and an athletic looking woman in her low to mid twenties staggers in, brown hair that may have once been cutely clamped in a band on the side of her head has been thrown into complete disarray and her light, windbreaker style white coat unzipped showing a bright pink shirt with a yellow star on it. "Chiho!"

"Over here Uzume-san!" Chiho scrambles to get out of the booth they were sitting in using the coat rack as a handhold, and Bruce winces slightly as she accidentally snaps the metal bracket off in doing so with a crunching sound of wood being destroyed and the whine of metal being overstressed. She glances at the bracket in her hand and the coats on the floor, but her smile never wavers, she launches herself at her Uzume and latches onto her neck for a hug that lasts seemingly forever.

When it does finally end, Uzume still holds her up, and they have their foreheads together, staring into each others eyes. Chiho composing herself, and Uzume finally feeling the shock of what she is seeing, and even feeling. "But, how Chiho? I saw you just two nights ago, and you were so sick you nearly died, how can this be? What... what happened to your eyes?"

"Bruce-san. Bruce-san donated the blood that saved me. But it made my eyes green."

Oh, no. Bruce starts to get up to go straighten things out. They need to be not thinking about him saving anybody. He has been on this train before too. Helping out here and there, sure. But saving people is for individuals that can stay in one spot long enough to follow through and do it right, and he is most definitely not that guy.

He does get preempted though by Kuno, who was awoken when the coat rack broke but waited to see what would happen. When Bruce starts to get up though, she panics. "Bruce-san!"

When he turns to see what she wants, a ghost of irritation starting to crawl across his face, she is kneeling on the bench, her face level with his, and she kisses him. Not a sloppy kiss. Not a kiss you would be afraid to tell your mother about. A quick, almost terrified peck on the lips, as though she was so scared he would abandon her that she needed to just once, feel his lips to verify they were real.

She stiffens on the bench, her eyes going wide as she screams through the kiss in pain, with a glow behind her slowly spreading out into the most delicate of golden gossamer wings, that are ravaged with angry green tears. The wings stay for nearly a minute while Bruce falls on the floor in his haste to get away from her, finally ending up against the far wall peering at her through half closed eyes with his right hand checking the pulse of his left wrist. Kuno's eyes begin to roll back as she kneels on the bench, and the wings seem to slowly repair themselves, though the spots that were once torn through are now glowing a neon green to go with the bright amber that the rest is. Her body thrown into shadow from the wings on her back, a warring gold and green. When her eyes start to roll forward and he can see they have turned a green like Chiho's, he goes from startled to astonished. When she then falls toward the end of the bench either dead or unconscious he catches her and holds her against his chest, her head finding the nook between his head and shoulder, and only then do the wings fade away. Her breath tickling his ear the only sign of life she gives.

By some kind of unspoken agreement they all seem to decide that whatever this was, discussing it here is a terrible idea. Chiho pays the bill and and extra bit to cover the damage she did to the booth, while Bruce pulls the bulky coat off, quite a trick while holding a comatose girl, and wraps it around her. Uzume is giving him a lot of space, though she doesn't look scared or even shocked at what happened. Merely disturbed. Like watching a movie for a thousand times, and then once watching an alternate ending. It may be good, it may be bad. But it is most definitely different, and different is disturbing. The man behind the counter takes their money happily enough, but he makes appeals to his ancestors as they walk out the door to please protect him and his humble noodle hut from all these unnatural goings on.

Uzume finally says something to Bruce when they are about two blocks from the noodle hut, heading generally north east. "So, Papa-san, I take it you like them young, yes?" She giggles at his look of horror and Chiho slaps her shoulder looking scandalized in the extreme.

"You be nice to Bruce-san! He is a good man and he needs your help, not to be tormented!"

"Umm, yeah. Help. Help would be good if it can explain what just happened in there. I have never seen a reaction like that to me. Nothing even remotely like it, actually."

Uzume gives him an odd look. "Reactions are closer to what happened to my Chiho, then?"

Bruce looks away, face falling to a grimace but says: "Actually, the most common result of a transfusion of my blood is a fairly quick death, with a few notable exceptions. I have a toxin in me that most people react poorly to. A best case scenario would probably be what happened to Chiho, though I will need to give her checkups for a few weeks to make sure nothing bad is happening. But the wings thing? That's a new one on me."

Uzume seems to accept that, though her look says that she will have more questions later. "Well, Papa-san, brace yourself because this is going to be a bit of a shock..."

"She's an alien, isn't she?" Bruce asks, cutting her off.

Uzume stumbles. "How in the hell did you know that?!"

Bruce stops, closes his eyes, and looks at the sky. "Because I have heard the phrase, "Brace yourself because this is going to be a shock" when applies to people before. So what is she? Asgardian? Skrull?"

Uzume Shrugs. "Sekirei, same as me. Chiho is my Ashikabi, and you, Papa-san, are now hers. What's a Skrull?"

"No, no sidetracking. What is an Ashikabi, and how the hell do I get the set of steak knives instead?"

Uzume stops. "She really didn't tell you anything, did she?"

"I heard these two chuckle heads using the word, but the way they were using it I thought she was looking for a sugar daddy or something. So, no. Assume nothing has been explained to me and take it from the top please."

"Okay then. Well, the basics of what you need to know is that Sekirei are an alien race that crash landed on earth like a billion years ago or something, and at some point much more recently the company MBI got a hold of the wreck and brought all one hundred and eight of us out of stasis. The fun bits are two fold. First, Sekirei are driven to find and bond with a soul mate, and when they do, its for life. Sorry you had to find out this way, but that girl has winged herself with you and if you die, she will die. If you turn her away, she will most likely go into a terminal depression and find a way to end it. Sorry to be blunt about this, but if I flower it up and you leave her and she dies, I don't want to field any guilt over it. So you get the facts. It isn't just a one way bond though, and supposedly it can't be a bad bond unless it was forced by the Ashikabi. I guess you could say all Sekirei are at least a little bit psychic, because when we feel ourselves reacting hard to an Ashikabi, and I think it is safe to say that she did, it is a coupling that can work out. It is sad that she didn't explain it properly first, but you should know that the little tart loves you now. She can't help it, it got encoded in her genes when you swapped spit. So, you know. Try not to be too much of a jerk. Also, try to be careful with her, I have never heard of a Sekirei that had her eyes turn green and fall unconscious when she got winged before. So... there might be something actually wrong with her."

Bruce looks up sharply at the word "genes" and cuts her off as soon as there is a break in speech. "Wait, genes? She used my DNA for this? Not like, a psychic hotline or something?"

"Yuppers, Papa-san. Genes. The second thing you need to know is that the guy that runs MBI is a nutball in the extreme and has decided that the best way to deal with a peaceful race of love hungry super humans is to force us to fight each other until only one is left. That is why all the exits to the city are locked down. They know what we all look like and wont let Sekirei or their Ashikabi leave this meat grinder he has set up. So, welcome aboard. Good luck, I guess."

They walk in silence for awhile. Bruce running this all around in his head like it is some kind of puzzle. Frankly, it is sounding like the guy that runs MBI should have watched the movie "War Games" as a child, because as near as he can tell the only way for this species of poor aliens to win is if they don't play. Of course, if you can't leave, and anybody is playing, then everybody is playing. Also, if this girl used DNA to do this to herself, well. The possibilities are endless but most of them are really, really bad. Then something occurs to him. "So, does that make us enemies or something?"

Uzume looks at him with gratitude and says, "Well, we might have been. But you gave me my Chiho, and you gave her life back to her. I won't say we could never be at odds, but we would have to be the last two, and we would have not been able to find a way to stop this crap first."

"Fair enough. So where are we going? I should really give Kuno and Chiho a physical soon. We need to know if there are going to be any further complications."

"Well, we are going to Izumo Inn. That is where I am staying and there are at least a couple of rooms available. The least I can do is cover the cost of your room for a couple of months. Call it your doctors fee. But since the landlady is probably asleep, and isn't a big fan of surprises." Then her voice drops to a respectful but still highly annoyed grumble "Also can't keep her noodle out of other peoples romances." Her voice then returns to normal. "I was thinking we might just stop by a hotel in the area for the evening and stop by the Izumo Inn tomorrow morning."

Bruce looks up at her. "It has to be two in the morning, what hotel not conjoined with an airport is going to allow check in at this time?"

Uzume giggles and hugs Chiho closer as she speeds up a bit. "The best kind ever, hurry up!"

About ten blocks later Bruce is standing in front of a single story, twenty five room hotel that charges by the hour and uses as its sign a neon amalgamation of a pulsing heart shape in rainbow colors.

"No, Uzume, really? I am old enough to be her father. This is not, not cool.

"Are you sure Papa-san? I mean, she is a cute little thing."

"Yes. Yes I am sure. Is there anywhere else?"

"Well, actually, now that you mention it, no. No there isn't. But honestly, even if there was, we would still be coming here. People have all kinds of kinks, and so the lighting in these rooms is unbelievable. Should be good for your health inspection on these two.

"Really? That's why you brought us here?" Bruce is almost looking as though he may be approving in spite of himself.

"Well, no. I brought us here for the vibrating bed, but the whole better light thing sounded good, so I decided to roll with it for a minute."

There is the sound of a slap to his right and then he hears Uzume giggle and Chiho say "No, Uzume-san, not in public!"

A few minutes later and she is handing Bruce a room key that adjoins her own, and tells him Chiho will be there for visual inspection when they wake up. Taking the key in one hand and still holding Kuno in the other, he enters the room and lays her out on the bed. At least the room is warm enough to not need to worry about getting her under covers. He sits down on the only chair in the room, located where the phone hangs on the wall. He glances over at Kuno. She is still breathing fine. Her gentle snores are heard throughout the room. If she doesn't wake up soon though, he is going to have to look her over anyway to find out what is wrong.

About then there is a frantic pounding on the door between the rooms. Bruce gets up and unlocks his side and the door immediately opens to a nearly naked and frantic Chiho who just says: "Bruce-san, please help I broke my Uzume!

Four hours later and Bruce still hasn't slept. Uzume and Kuno are laid out next to each other on the bed in his room, and he had Chiho strip them down to their small clothes with Chiho alternating between fretting over the both of them and laying down next to Uzume and crying on her. The problem is that aside from the eyes, they look fine. Breathing is normal. Pulse is good. This tattoo thing on their backs of a bird and a yin and yang symbol that Chiho claims is very important is still there. He is about to see if he can somehow run down some smelling salts when Kuno finally stirs. Her eyes flutter open, the pale green of the surround, and the dark green of the iris surrounding the still black dot of the pupil. She immediately sits up, paying no heed whatsoever to her state of dress and as soon as she sees Bruce launches herself at him. Hugging him tight while he takes a step back from the force of the hit.

Kuno is crying. Great sobs wracking her small frame as she stammers. "So angry. So afraid. So much pressure all the time. So careful. So much despair. So alone. So very alone. Kuno can hear your heart and it cries so hard all the time. Kuno is sorry. So sorry, Bruce-san. So Sorry. Please forgive for not finding Bruce-san sooner. For not helping sooner. Please forgive Kuno."

Not quite sure what to do, Bruce sits back down in the chair by the phone, holding the tiny girl who probably isn't quite five feet tall and weighs less than eighty pounds on his lap as she once again buries her head in his shoulder and cries while he tries to make soothing sounds. Eventually, Kuno calms down and stops crying, but doesn't seem to be motivated to move off of his lap.

Bruce decides that before life has a chance to throw him another curve ball, there is one thing he should probably get out of the way now if he is going to actually be responsible for this alien.

"Kuno?"

"Yes, Bruce-san?"

"I need you to promise me something. I need you to promise me something and never go against it unless I tell you circumstances have changed."

"Yes, Bruce-san. Kuno will promise."

"You know how Chiho and you have green eyes?"

"They are green now?"

"Yes. Yes they are. And if you ever see me turning that color, green. If you ever see me turning green you are to run away. Come to wherever we are staying, or if I turn green there, go to the diner where we met. I will be there for you eventually, but if I am green You have to leave. Can you do that for me?"

"Ashikabi-san, Kuno is your Sekirei, Kuno needs to protect you. How can Kuno protect you if run away? How can Kuno help you if she isn't there?"

"Kuno, it is obvious that you have some kind of mental rapport with me now. Do you know why I am angry, scared, alone, all those things?"

"Kuno does not. Images. Flashes of pain that don't make sense. But mostly just sorrowful and angry feelings lurking around a bottomless well of regret."

"Kuno, If I am green I don't need help, or protection. If I am green I am a locomotive out of control and I am on a track that is going to lead to more and more regret. I don't want you to be part of that regret. Do you understand?"

Her eyes are a little wide, but she says "Yes, Bruce-san. Kuno will promise to run away if you are green." Her eyes narrow. "But she will not promise how far, and she will not say how long, and if Kuno can help, she will."

Deciding that was probably the best he was going to get out of the little alien, he pats her on the back softly while her breathing becomes very regular again. When he looks up he can see that Uzume has woken up and that her and Chiho are embracing on the bed, though Uzume is looking at him with obvious curiosity

Frankly, he kinda hopes she can stay curious on this one forever. But he is doubtful. In a city full of death matching aliens it seems probable that his luck will run out sometime.

Ok, that seems like a reasonable stopping point for chapter one. I understand that it is written with an expectation that people will have some knowledge of the source material, that was a deliberate choice as I wanted to be able to mention things like "Skrulls" without having to explain them. If you truly do get lost, then I apologize. Not enough to go back and fix it, but you are welcome to some small measure of my sympathy. If you like what is here, be sure to let me know! will take a stab at chapter two when either I see a lot of interest or I get bored. Whichever comes first.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Once everybody but Kuno is awake and seems to be... Well if not healthy in a traditional sense at least not likely to die in the next few hours, Chiho and Uzume both go back to their own room. Bruce places Kuno on the bed before going back to the chair with a spare pillow to put between his head and the wall. Considering these rooms go by the hour, he is guessing that he isn't going to get a lot of sleep before Uzume shakes him awake, but anything is better than nothing. Heaven knows he had been forced to sleep in much less comfortable conditions than this before.

He awakens with a jerk at a knock on the door. Blinking due to the sunlight streaming in the window, he can see a man in a black suit standing outside. Tailored to perfection, six foot four and wearing dark sunglasses. An obvious bulge under his arm from a shoulder holster and the stereotypical skin colored spiral cord style headset stuck in and over his ear. He is waiting at the door and looking at Bruce through the crack in the drapes. He motions towards the door with an impatient gesture.

Bruce starts to get up, and nearly falls. At some point while he was asleep, Kuno had put the other bed pillow on his feet and was asleep with a her head on the pillow and a hand holding his leg. She is also blinking, wondering what is going on and starting to raise her head. Not being sure whether or not the man has seen her, Bruce says: "Just a minute, I'll be right there." Then drops his voice to a whisper and says "Wait here, I will go see what this guy wants."

Standing up slowly and clutching his lower back with his right arm to hide the need to maneuver around Kuno he makes his way to the door and undoes the lock. Leaving the chain on and opening the door a crack, he squints into the mid morning sun and says: "Can I help you?"

The man doesn't respond with words, just points to a briefcase in front of the door and gives him a rather disgusted look as he glances behind to see Kuno creeping up behind and to the left of Bruce. Rolling his eyes, Bruce responds. "It isn't what it looks like."

The man is already turning to leave when Bruce asks: "So, what is in the case?"

He doesn't answer. Bruce shuts the door. "Get dressed Kuno, its time to leave."

Kuno looks at him a little oddly. "Is Bruce-san going to get the briefcase?"

Bruce doesn't even look up from doing the buttons on his coat. "Nope. To big a chance it is connected to a problem I had last night before we met you. Could be a bomb, trapped with gas, rigged to electrocute somebody. Who knows? Rule number one of being on the run is that mysterious handouts from powerful people are always going to cause more trouble than they are worth. Every time. Could you go and please check on Chiho and Uzume? Make sure they are getting ready to go as well?"

Kuno nods, and after slipping on her skirt and some kind of skin tight leggings, she goes to the door between the two rooms and cracks it open. "Bruce-san, there is nobody here. They must have left without us. Maybe they get food or something?"

Bruce nods, the faked smile he is holding for her benefit slipping a little. "Well, hopefully we can run into them again. I am not a huge fan of staying here when we know somebody hunted us down. So we need to go."

Bruce makes a quick glance out the window and he can see the man has stopped with his fingers brushing on the door of his car, looking at the door and case like it was a particularly disobedient child. Then the man starts walking back towards the door, one hand to his ear as he speaks.

"Kuno, go into their room and shut the door. Lock it and don't come out until I ask you to."

Kuno can feel that he is getting frustrated. He has taken the screw style bottle opener from next to the ice bucket and concealed it in his hands. "Is there problem, Bruce-san?"

"I hope not. But go, and be quick." Holding the implement in his hand so that the corkscrew bit will stick out between his knuckles if he makes a fist, he once again responds to the man beating on the door. Opening it again the same way, just a few inches with the chain still attached. "Oh, it is you again. Are you perhaps having car trouble?"

The man looks angry, and practically growls: "That is your welcome kit to MBI's plan you pervert asshole, just take the thing so I can get to my next stop."

Bruce is about to respond when they both turn at the sound of some kind of electrical discharge. Not quite a full on lightning strike, but the sound an ark welder being played with by a two year old might make. Then across the street he sees another young girl, couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen, in black stalkings and gloves wearing a short white dress. Brown hair held up behind a headband. She is sprinting, straight up sprinting down the road and she is holding in her grasp a hammer.

Bruce blinks. Calling it a hammer isn't really doing it justice. She is running down the road carrying what has to be at minimum five hundred pounds of what looks to be a rough forged and then shined up beast of metal connected to her hands by a handle that by all appearances had to have been scrounged from the plumbing department of a hardware store. Cap would have a hard time sprinting with that thing, for crying out loud. Even if she has the strength somehow, she shouldn't be able to get the leverage to use such a monster. Unless her body is made out of lead there is no way she could control that much kinetic energy. She yells behind her at some foe that hasn't come into view yet. "Leave me alone you crazy bitches! I don't even have my Ashikabi, I am not part of the plan yet!"

Then her hammer gets hit by what seems to be a horizontal lightning bolt, channeling all the energy through her body on its way to the ground. Her whole body shakes and muscle control is lost mid stride, causing her to drop her hammer and then slide after it, her body slamming into the hammer after a few feet when the slab of metal hits a parked car and stops. Two leather wearing girls are now walking down the road after her, at this point sauntering along and grinning wildly. The one on the right in a deep violet getup, the one on the left in a dark pink. Both outfits, identical save for color, are the walking manifestation of a submissive fifteen year old boys masturbatory fantasy complete with the long dark hair and the high heels. They walk toward the hammer girl who is now struggling to get her feet under her. Crawling up the hammer handle which is sticking straight up. The one in violet responds. "Yeah, its too bad for you that you are now part of our plan. We take you out unwinged, it'll be way easier all the way around."

Bruce and this enforcer type that so desperately wants him to take the briefcase are watching all this when Bruce says under his breath. "The are gonna kill her, aren't they?"

The man, seemingly unperturbed and just watching the hips move with an appreciative eye, "Looks like. Sucks to be her."

"But you have a gun. You are involved in this, you can't just let them kill her! You need to stop this!"

"Yeah, not my job or my problem, pervert. Just take your damn package like a good boy and try not to think about it."

Bruce knows he is on the edge. He has felt it enough times. The rising tide of rage, held back by the flimsiest of barricades. The feeling of powerlessness in the face of a need to act, and act now. He tries one more time, unlatching the door and opening it to make a final plea with this armed soldier to break it up. To save a girls life. To be a decent human being and redeem some small piece of what must pass for his wretched soul. But he forgets, in his haste. In his anger and frustration he has let slip his mind that he still has the corkscrew in his hand, and he has made a fist with it.

The man is skilled. He sees the barest glint of metal, and has moved two steps away with his pistol drawn before the door is completely open.

Bruce has time to say "No!" before the man fires. He can hear Kuno scream behind him. The shattering pain of being shot in the gut causes his eyes to close as he sees all three of the other girls stop in their tracks. Then the tide becomes a tsunami. A cataclysm he has felt before. His last real thought is to pray that the girl remembers to run.

Kuno watches in horror as her Ashikabi is shot, running toward him instinctively. She can see the grin on the mans face, but stops at Bruce-san because the man still has his gun out as Bruce falls to the floor, aiming to finish the job. He raises his eyebrows twice and in the smarmiest cocky voice he can muster, says to her. "Blame him little lady, I was just here to deliver a package."

Kuno looks at this man with hate, a hate she has never experienced before. But there is something wrong. It isn't her hate, she realizes. It is Bruce-sans. There is pain, but the anger and hate rolling off of him in waves makes her look down to him.

He is twisting on the ground, as though struggling. As though fighting himself. She sees his body start to expand, his clothing to shred. Then she sees the look on the once cocky man whose eyes are now open so wide that his brows look lost over his glasses. He empties his pistol into her Ashikabi. When Bruce-san looks at her, on his hands and knees yet able to merely turn his head slightly and look down at her, she sees green. She sees so very much green, and as she promised, she runs. Stumbling backwards to the other room as fast as her legs will carry her. There is a roar, a cacophony of sound like the battle cry of a wounded god that echos all over the city. Letting everyone know that indeed, the game has changed.

A giant green hand reaches out to the now retreating MBI thug, and the grip around his head and shoulders crashes his skull and collarbone. Now a twitching mass in his grip, the beast throws the remains at the two lightning users. It isn't a particularly accurate throw. The one in pink has barely time to realize that at the speed it was moving she would have no way to dodge when it careens by her and hits a car that was parked behind her on the street. His top half ends up in the front seat, and his bottom in the back. The force on the windows shatters them into a glittering sand, the frame between the doors bends in and the roof partially collapses down as it tried in vain to follow the door jam. The two electricity manipulators are covered in a red and brown mist of blood spray and sludge as the lower torso simply expels its contents at them in response to the pressure on it. A screech of disgust from one and wide eyed panic from the other, who reaches over to grab her sister and tries to haul her away. The lightning strike that hits him in the face is painful and infuriating. Finally standing up to his full eight feet, he takes two quick strides and kicks the agent's car toward her, sending the radiator and hood spinning off into the sky and the remainder of the vehicle at them at unbelievable speeds. Before it has even reached the target, he has brought his fists up and is running. Not to them. But to a midway point between them and the hammer wielder, stopping himself by driving his foot fourteen inches into the ground and then stepping out of the furrow he creates. On his way there the car has clipped the one in violet, and with a crunch her arm is snapped in several places as she is thrown into a world of intense pain as well as through the plate glass window of a mini mart along with the kicked vehicle and the car the suited man had recently violated. The scene becomes one of smoke and fire, downed electrical lines and twisted wreckage. Her sister screams, racing after her as the green thing roars again, a sound of hate fueled rage that calls forth an instinctual desire in most sentient species to run.

"Bruce-san!"

He can hear something, but it isn't important. The one that hurt him, she is important. The ones that were killing for no reason, they are important. The fury won't let anything else matter. The need to destroy everything that contributed to his current state washes away all thought like a sidewalk chalk masterpiece in a heavy spring rain. He takes a step toward the store, his lip curling in disgust.

"Bruce-san, Stop!"

Then he feels something. Against his leg. There is something clutching his leg. He looks down, already balling up his fist. He looks down into the terrified eyes of Kuno, and he stops. Dimly, in some miniscule recess of what might be called his intellect, a connection is made. He can feel her. He can feel her, and she is afraid, she is so afraid she is trembling. Afraid of him, yet she won't let go. Won't let him continue. Afraid of him, yes. But also afraid for him. Another connection in his ragged consciousness. She cares about him. Needs him. Needs him to stop, and she is important. She is a butterfly caught in his hurricane, and he can deposit her gently onto a leaf or fling her at incredible speeds into a wall, but he has to decide now. Now and for all time. There is enough left of him, just barely. Enough to recognize that if he makes the decision to save her from himself now, and therefore proves to himself he can, should he ever fail in that the backlash would destroy him. The loss of this delicate thing would undo him in ways he would never recover from. It isn't the first time the green monster has had to deal with this realization. A pang of regret at what might have been assaults him, but is quickly smoothed over. Made manageable. The force in his mind is gentle, and kind, but insistent. Now that the connections are being established they are coming in faster and faster. Almost as though her being here is helping him to think. To put away the rage. To fill with something besides a need to destroy.

He picks up the strange green eyed girl that he barely knows, and yet feels more real to him right now than his own thoughts. He carries her gently back to the hotel room, and sits next to the door with her on his lap. He doesn't even notice when the lightening twins make a mad dash down the street to get away from him or that the hammer girl walks over. He does notice when the hammer girl sits next to him and speaks to Kuno. He can't make out easily what they are saying. Too much thinking. The emotional turmoil is past now. As always he feels used up. Bled dry when it ends, and despite a small part of him knowing that the danger is not over, and he needs to be there to protect his new important person, he drifts off to sleep anyway. The soothing song in his mind allowing him, for the moment, to feel peace.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

He wakes up he is in a small, dim, yet comfortable room. He is laid out on a Japanese style sleeping mat, and someone has put a blanket over him. He can feel warmth from his right as he lays on his back, and realizes that someone is there. Raising his head slightly, he can see Kuno is laying there. Fully clothed and on top of the blankets. But there all the same.

"Are you better, Bruce-san?"

"I think so, Kuno. I am sorry you had to see that. Did I... Did I kill anyone? It... It feels like someone died this time." His response is hoarse. Whispered, but still recognizable as strained. A question asked that doesn't want to be answered. Kuno nods.

"Only the one who shot you. Only the one that tried to kill you. The others you let go."

Bruce shakes his head slightly. "That doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like I let them go." He peers into her eyes as if looking for something. "It feels like you did."

She smiles, a halfhearted, if genuine smile that barely reaches her eyes before the memory of what she had seen overtakes her. The blush that appears in her cheeks doesn't go away so easily though when she responds. "Bruce-san let them go. Kuno just helped Bruce-san to see clearly in the storm. Kuno was a lighthouse, not a rudder."

Bruce thinks about that for a minute. "Thank you Kuno. Just..." He has to swallow twice to speak again. "Thank you, but please be careful. Please, for me."

"Yes, Bruce-san. Kuno will try." With that she lays back down and curls into a tight ball under his arm. Eyes shut and a look of contentment and peace on her features.

"Where are we, anyway?" Bruce asks. He is pretty sure that this isn't a hospital but it isn't familiar either and he knows that they don't have any money.

Kuno's response is "Isumo Inn. Chiho and Uzume were out getting us breakfast when we awoke. They got back just in time to see you shot, but were still to far away to help. Blocks and blocks. Uzume felt really bad about it until she checked and you had no holes in you. Now knowing that and seeing you... Green, Kuno thinks maybe she only feels a little bit bad about it."

Bruce smiles in spite of himself, though the expression has more than a bit of a smirk included. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It didn't seem to matter how good, how noble, how generous or kind his allies were. It never seemed to matter what meat grinder he was pulled through or how many times it was the green menace that solved the problem. Nobody ever worried about him. They might walk on eggshells around him. They might be scared of him, or in awe of him. But he was a mass of muscle and a seemingly indestructible body and will. Nobody worried about him.

Other than Kuno.

Sitting up, he still feels the deep tissue soreness he always does after an episode. Looking to his left, he recognizes the hammer against the wall and the girl sprawled next to him, looking as though she had chosen that exact spot to just collapse in a heap. Bruce pushes her over onto her back and, with more than a little trepidation, gently pulls open an eyelid. The green within green eye that stares out at him is what he expected, though not what he hoped for. At least she is still breathing, and a quick check shows that her heartbeat is strong and steady.

"Kuno, who is this that has apparently molested me in my sleep?"

Kuno scrunches up into a little tighter ball. "Number 84, Yashima. She was reacting to you very strongly, and Kuno told her that with you she thought forgiveness might be easier than permission. Kuno is sorry. Please don't hate Kuno."

He ruffles her hair with his hand. "No. No hate. She seems to be in the same shape as you are, which may or may not be good. We don't know yet. But Kuno, never again. I won't have any more little girls chaining themselves to me like this. Its not right."

He can barely hear the slightly petulant mumble against his side, "Its right if the bond says it is, Bruce-san." When he looks down at her though, she speaks up with a sigh. "Yes, Bruce-san. Kuno will try to protect you from the love of others if you wish."

Not being blind to her feelings in the matter, he holds her to his side and simply thanks her. Then drifts back off to sleep.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It is safe to day that Minaka Hiroto, founder and chairman of the multinational conglomerate monster of a company called MBI, was not having the day that he had expected to have. In fact, it would not be untruthful to say that he was having a day that he never believed he could have at all. Given the amount of time that he spends thinking about the possible outcomes of any confrontation in the city that his company has purchased from Japan, the genius level intellect he can put to the thoughts, the amount of money and intelligence gathering that he has at his fingertips, it would not be untruthful to declare that while he might not know on a blow for blow basis what would happen in any given confrontation, he had a very good grasp of all possible outcomes that were even remotely probable and had contingency plans to deal with the variables should they occur.

He was the Game Master, after all. It really was his duty, and if nothing else in the world, he takes this duty quite seriously. Quite a bit was riding on it after all.

But this, this defied any possible projected outcome. Staring at the real time satellite video feed as his messenger was picked up and flung into becoming a pasty smear of meat. Then a car being kicked. Kicked, for crying out loud, at an estimated speed of two hundred and ten miles an hour before burying itself, another car full of the newly christened agent mulch, and one of the lightning twins into a mini mart. Amazing the girl survived, really. At first he hadn't made the connection. He thought this might be one of his feathers. Apparently a particularly ugly green feather, that had found the Sekirei version of growth hormone or something. But when dear little ninety five came out and attached herself to the thing like some kind of bipedal tick, it all became clear. This wasn't a Sekirei at all. This was an Ashikabi. This was someone from the outside trying to cheat in his game, and cheating was not to be tolerated. With flourish, he pressed a few buttons on his data pad, confirming a few orders. Well, cheater-san. It is quite regrettable that your hubris is going to keep ninety five from being able to play, but at least she will pass on to her next phase of existence without the stigma of being the pawn of... Of... Oh dear. He had been so interested in the reality of the jolly green gigolo, he had completely forgotten that the abominable turd had never bothered to open the briefcase, much less had a chance to answer the cell phone inside it and offer up his name. Double checking the location of ninety five causes a panicked moment as he cancels the previous orders. No, no we are not yet quite ready to send a team of hit men there. Instead he puts a detail on keeping track of the two of them until a better opportunity reveals itself, and then puts another on finding out who or what this things is.

Then he takes a bath. All this heavy thinking had worked up quite a sweat after all.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Bruce is awoken once again to a knock on the door, though this time it is accompanied by the speculative voice of Chiho. "Bruce-san? Are you well? It is time for dinner, you should bring Kuno and yourself down to eat now."

A headache that he had been trying to sleep through flares up again. Probably dehydration and hunger, he realizes as he considers when last he had anything to eat or drink. Glancing quickly around, he can see that both Kuno and Yashima are stirring, though based on what he is seeing, Yashima had woken up before at some point and then cried herself back to sleep while clutching his chest. Whatever these poor girls experienced when they kissed him it would probably be banned by the Geneva conventions. The thought of it makes him weary, and adds to his regret over the entire situation.

"Yes, I am well I suppose. It looks like I may have a third for dinner, is that OK?"

There is silence for a moment. "Yashima-san? Then she has the eyes too?"

"Yeah. I was apparently the victim of some kind of love crime while sleeping." Bruce claims.

"Bruce-san is quite the catch, it seems." There is a cheerful giggle from outside the room. "Be down soon!"

The light footsteps leading away from the room fade and Bruce sees both of his Sekirei looking at him as though waiting for direction. "Well, lets get cleaned up a bit and head down. I am starving." They both smile, though Yashima seems a bit subdued. Bruce puts an arm around her shoulders and holds her close for a moment before they get up. Lightly kissing the top of her head. "Its OK, little one. I forgive you. Lets go." She perks up a bit at that, and after rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, his two shadows queue up behind him for the trip down the stairs and into the living area.

The living area is a very nice, very clean, very traditional affair with two couches. A couple of chairs finish the seating area, and a smallish TV sits forlornly off to the side, as though it was ashamed to be a necessity at all. He recognizes Chiho and Uzume sitting on the couch, and can see the back of a head of lavender hair. Chiho looks up and smiles, Uzume doing so a second later when she realized what caught her lovers attention. "Bruce-san! Kuno! Yashima! So good you could make it to dinner! This is Miya Asama, the landlady." Chiho's cheer is rather infectious and Bruce finds himself grinning and nodding along with her.

"Papa-san, it is good you finally got up, we were about to send search parties." Uzume is grinning as well, but behind the smile he can see her eyes lock on to Yashima's as though looking for confirmation, and when she gets it her smile falters slightly.

The purple haired landlady stands and turns around. She looks young. At maybe a tiny bit over five feet, at first glace she seems like nothing more than what she claims to be when she starts explaining her status and the rules of the inn. A widow, who to honor her husband will never turn anyone away who can follow her rules. No violence. No improper behavior. No foul language. She tells him that Uzume-san has rented the room for him, so there was no need for paperwork unless she stopped paying. Then she stops talking for a moment. She places her hand nest to her face, with a finger going up to rest alongside her head, by her eye, and her thumb resting on her chin.

"Bruce-san. I feel that I need to ask you a few questions though, both to satisfy my own curiosity and to guarantee the safety of my other lodgers. Would that be alright?"

Bruce comes around the couches and sits down on one of the chairs. Kuno sits on the floor between his legs, with her feet pulled up and her arms around her knees, leaning into him. Yashima sets her ridiculously oversized hammer down next to Bruce so gently that barely a sound is heard, with the slender handle sticking straight up. She then sits cross legged on the hammer head with the handle sticking up between her legs, and leans over to rest her head and arm on Bruce's own. Both look at Miya with friendly yet concerned expressions, with just a touch of suspicion. Miya smiles behind here hand at the reaction of his girls.

Bruce isn't thrilled by this, but recognizes that Chiho, in her exuberance to explain her new condition and more importantly explain away her old condition, may have let slip things that could worry a landlady. "Of course, Asama-san. What do you need to know?"

She looks a bit pensive, staring directly into his eyes. "This toxin that Chiho tried to tell me about. Is it dangerous to others under normal circumstances? I see a lot of green here and I am concerned."

Bruce has to mull that one over for a second. "Under normal circumstances, no. She received a blood transfusion from me that I was not told about until after the fact, and these two..." He motions to his entourage, "Somehow managed to contract it after rather sneakily stealing kisses from me. I will admit that the kiss thing is highly unusual. Never had that kind of thing happen before. But, I don't generally wander around kissing people, so I don't expect it to be a huge problem. I wasn't there when Uzume got it, but I am going to guess there is a fair chance that kissing was involved." He gets nods from both girls. "On a related note, I feel it is worth mentioning that the toxin that I carry in me can..." He stops for a minute, as though picking his words. "Effect my mood somewhat drastically if I am hurt or something happens that would generally cause a fight or flight scenario. Adrenaline, heart rate increase, that kind of thing. I try to keep to myself and actively avoid conflict of any kind, but if you would rather not deal with the possibility I can understand that and will be on my way. I would not wish to impose on you a situation with which you were uncomfortable."

Miya smiles, and it occurs to Bruce that she probably isn't really asking for the answer to the question. In all probability she already knew this and more from talking to Uzume and Chiho. No, what is likely happening here is that she is trying to determine if he can be honest, and potentially discrete. It would seem that at least so far he has passed.

"The other thing that I would ask is your intentions towards these two young ladies that seem to be so smitten with you."

Bruce sighs and tries to find a wording that won't irritate somebody. In the end fails, but he gives himself props for trying. "Well, I think "smitten" is probably the right word. I am old enough to be both their father after all. I'll be honest and say I haven't really thought that far ahead yet. As I am a doctor myself, and thanks to my condition something of an expert on the side effects that can occur because of it, I think my current plan is to just keep them safe and healthy while we look into any side effects of the new eye color that is all the rage around here. Then I suppose I will take them under my wing until they get around to finding someone their own age to pursue." Kuno and Yashima get death grips on his leg and arm respectively, both looking at him in horror.

Miya hides a smile behind her hand and barely controls a giggle thinking: Oh, the poor damned fool has no idea.

Uzume doesn't even bother to hide her laughter and just says, "Good luck, Papa-san! You are going to need it!"

Chiho scowls at him, apparently for being so crass as to not profess undying love to two women who would have to add their ages together to be almost as old as him.

Miya stands up again, saying "Bruce-san, I think we will give this a trial run while you need to be here for the girls medical needs. But if there are problems, I may need to evict you. Is that acceptable?"

"Of course, and thank you. Now, somebody said something about food?"

"Indeed, follow me into the dining area and we will see to food."

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Higa Izumi Is a man used to getting what he wants. The sole heir to a medical and pharmaceutical company of worldwide renown, the money and power he wields in corporate circles for a man in his twenties is astounding. Yet as he surveys the room in his hospital where Chiho Hidaka was until quite recently effectively his prisoner as her body withered away, he can only think that all his wealth and power must be some kind of karmic compensation for having to deal with such colossal idiots on a regular basis. He is currently staring unbelieving at his hospital head of security and the doctor that had performed the latest surgery on the young woman. "Let me see if I have this straight. Let me walk through what happened. Due to unusual circumstances surrounding his survival, I pull strings to get this "Bruce" transferred to my medical facility and then keep him out by drugging him into a medical coma while we do our tests." The doctor looks surprised at this, though the security man is merely hanging his head low. "After six weeks of him being in our care, we are having to put enough drugs in him to wipe out the south side of Tokyo just to keep him unconscious for a single day. Thereby completely justifying my curiosity. Then one day, rather than give him the standard dose you skipped it." His voice raises to a near bellow "In it's entirety, you decided on your own authority to skip his regular dose of medication just so you could get blood from him for another patient?" His voice then drops to a hiss. "Then you decide, apparently on a whim, to introduce the two, leave them alone, and they get away by leaping out of a second story window. After, of course, a forty four kilogram woman became upset and with the use of only her human body put two centimeter deep hand prints into a steel bar and then shrugged off a gunshot to the back." By the end of this he is bellowing again. "Then, you lost them. A man wearing lime green pants and a hunters orange shirt, and you lost them both. Does that sum up what happened here night before last?"

The security chief answers quickly, before the doctor can say anything to get them both killed. "This is accurate. I have no excuse. I await your judgment."

Higa strains to regain his poise. He is known for never losing his cool like this, he needs to get it back under control. But they were just so stupid.

"I want every piece of that man we extracted boxed, frozen, and shipped to our research facility immediately. The amount of material you can supply will determine whether or not you keep your jobs. Go."

Higa then sighs. Pulls out his cell phone. Thankfully, he has other resources that are not so incompetent that he can draw upon when he needs to. "Number 22, I have a new assignment for you. Something of a scavenger hunt."

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

End of chapter two. Not quite as long as chapter one, but I am thinking it is likely that my chapters will tend to run about this length. So far the response I have gotten has been generally good, and I appreciate it. Thank you much, and I will continue to post as I find the time and the will to continue.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After the meal and cleanup were completed, Miya excused herself for bed thus leaving the five to their own devices in the living room. It doesn't take long before the conversation swings around to the subject of eyes.

"So, Papa-san. When did you want to do this check-up on all of us, anyway?" Uzume looks a bit disturbed at having to ask this, but seems to have resigned herself to the need for it.

Bruce shrugs. "I can do a basic visual inspection whenever you are ready. Really though I need to put together a doctors bag to get any real data. There are some tools of the trade that you really can't do without."

You know, like a stethoscope, blood pressure cuff. Million dollar imaging machines that can take pictures of all the stuff going wrong in them that I can't possibly discover here. Little things like that.

Chiho partially raises a hand, as if waiting for permission to speak, though she starts talking as soon as there is a break in the conversation. "I may have some of what you need in my storage, Bruce-san. From when my condition was not so severe and I was taken care of at home. I will need to go there for my things anyway, it would be no trouble to get the medical bag."

"OK, that sounds good. I will write up a quick list of what we are going to need, at minimum. Hopefully you already have all or most of it."

Yashima, still sitting on her hammer at her chosen spot to the left of the chair he had staked out for himself, taps Bruce once on the hand. With a visible effort to collect her courage she asks: "Bruce-san, I am very glad you have accepted me despite my sneaky kiss." She blushes a bit at this point. "But I do still want to know what happened. You were scary, and your scariness seems to be infectious. What are you?"

Bruce looks down. It might almost be easier if he was on his home dimension, plane, parallel world, whatever. At least then everybody thought they had enough of an idea that the question didn't often come up. "I am... An accident. During a weapons test I was exposed to some really bad things, mostly radioactive things. Well, they had an effect on me. Basically, what you saw is what happens when I get scared enough, angry enough..." He pokes his belly where the gunshot penetrated. "Hurt enough. The other guy takes over, and that thing comes out of me. Turns me into a bundle of rage and exposed nerve, Until I calm down, about all I can do is try to direct the brute in the direction of the bad people and hope none of the good people get in the way. He is a tad indiscriminate. But let me repeat for all of you what I told Kuno last night. If you see me like that, I don't need help. I need you to stay away, keep yourself safe. After what I have seen, I am willing to believe that you Sekirei are pretty powerful, but..." He looks up, making it a point to pass his eyes over each of the aliens in the room, and spends an extra breath looking at Kuno, who is sitting in front of him again. Her head tilted back so to him her face is upside down. "Just don't assume anything when dealing with that thing. Don't assume it is me. Don't assume it will help. Don't assume it won't hurt you. Don't worry about the odds it faces or concern yourself with the safety of the wretched thing. I have spent ten years trying to get rid of it, and ten years being hunted down and fought by some of the most powerful things in the galaxy. It is still here, and I don't think it is going anywhere anytime soon. I don't want to hurt anybody, but it would kill me to hurt any of you, so. So just don't."

The silence when he is done talking is deafening. Chiho and Uzume finally getting a full description both find themselves a little shocked, though it becomes more clear to Chiho why Kuno had reacted the way she did after her winging. To have suddenly been privy to the raw emotion behind such an existence and how it would scar a person must be an overwhelming experience. Kuno's eyes start to mist over and she looks down, clutching his leg as though to comfort one or both of them. Yashima doesn't move, though her knuckles turn white against the handle of her hammer and her lips become a resolute half smile that Bruce thinks are probably a bad sign. He did his best. He can just hope they listen.

Then he turns to Chiho. "Your transfusion is not the first one that has come out of me since then. My cousin ended up like the green me all the time, except she was able to keep her intellect. The military where I am from has spent years trying to turn my condition into a mass producible weapon, and have managed to get samples of me or my research enough times to turn out some fairly horrifying results. That is pretty much how I know how to live on the run. Trying to stay ahead of them. I am not sure whether or not they can find me here, but if they do you need to understand that I will have to hit the ground running when it happens. I am not saying you two can't come with, but you had best be willing to live on fear and pop tarts, and out of sleeping bags for awhile." With this last bit, he is looking specifically at his two Sekirei

He gives Chiho a slightly odd look. "Chiho, I don't mean to pry, but something about our time in the hospital has been rolling around in my head since we left and it just won't leave me alone. I think I know why they might have wanted to shoot me, or at least I can make a reasonable guess as to why. But you had been under their care for a long time. They knew your condition. Why would they want you there so bad that they would shoot you to keep you there? It doesn't make any sense. Considering the shape they left you in after the surgery, the shape that they would have had to believe you were still in, shooting you like that could have easily have killed you outright. It just doesn't track unless they knew a lot more about me at the time than I think they did."

At this Uzume turns turns to Chiho. "Those bastards shot at you?!"

Bruce corrects her. "Not at her. Shot her. They didn't miss. Plunked her a good one in the right shoulder blade from about ten feet away. I just can't figure out why."

Chiho looks embarrassed, turning away from Uzume as he cheeks turn bright red. "I didn't want to worry you, Uzume-san. I feel fine."

Uzume, apparently unconvinced, is leaned behind her, pulling down the collar of her shirt roughly to see the alleged wound. She breathes softly in disbelief and murmurs. "Not even a scar." Turning to stare at him she continues in a regular, if strained, speaking tone. Her eyes widening in worry. "Is... Is this part of why you need to inspect her? Is she going to turn into something like the other you?"

Bruce nods. "It is a possibility, but it isn't likely. The toxin is unstable, I myself have gone through a few changes over time. But it seems to be quickly settling in her. Stabilizing. It could very well be the connection she has with you. Emotion can have a profound impact on what this thing does to a person, for some reason, and being an Ashikabi seems to help things. At least, I think it is helping me." He places his right hand on Kuno's shoulder and gives it a squeeze, a gesture of thanks. She closes her eyes with a smile and arches her back into it, preening at the unspoken, yet obvious praise. "I am less concerned about a condition like I have than something more mundane, such as tumorous growths and such. The regeneration she has probably applies to most, if not all of her body. I would imagine the strength does as well, so if something were to start growing incorrectly it would likely go bad fairly quickly. Eventually we will need to get access to some serious medical and lab equipment to check everybody, but I am hoping we can hold off on that until the heat dies down."

Uzume turns to Chiho, a smile playing around her lips. "Strength?"

"Darn you Bruce-san! I was hoping to save that for a surprise!"

"Oh. Sorry Chiho. Umm... Yeah. Strength. We will need to test it to find the limits of it, but I have already seen her crush steel bars with just her hand grip. I am guessing it will be impressive. Frankly, you should all try to experiment with what you may or may not be able to do now. The reason that I am still like I am after ten years is because it has done things to my DNA. So, since your winging ritual thing uses the Ashikabi DNA to function and actually changes you to suit, my guess is that things are not as they should be with any of you." He grimaces. "Sorry."

Uzume gives him a look. "We know, Papa-san. The eyes were kind of a clue. Lets go ahead and get this inspection done so I can stop freaking out about it."

Bruce nods to her, and they all walk into the kitchen on his claim that the light will be better. One by one he has them strip down to their bra and panties. Since he has no baseline, he has to form it now. Which means a pad of paper supplied by Uzume, then the notes. Basic measurements of all kinds of things. Resting pulse rate he can get, though a true blood pressure requires tools he doesn't have. One thing he notices about the lot of them is that they appear flawless. There are no scars, not even on little Chiho. Perfectly symmetrical bodies. They are all the perfect representation of a female within the dimensions that they have. Uzume of course being the only one to have filled out significantly, but the regeneration being able to set right even things that were in all ways but aesthetically completely healed even before its introduction is astonishing. Even Bruce still caries the slim line on his belly where they removed his appendix as a child. Then the questions. Nothing is sacred, everything from mental states to bowel movements. When the last, Yashima, is getting dressed Uzume turns to him. "So? What is the results, Papa-san? Are we going to live?

Bruce gives her an apologetic grin. "I have no idea. This was an attempt to establish where you all are now. I won't be able to see changes until we do this again in a few days. Sorry girls. Real medicine sometimes takes time. No that we are done with that though I need to ask again. Chiho, can you think of any reason why they would shoot you at the hospital?"

Chiho looks puzzled. "Unless they saw the bed rails and wanted to know more, I really have no idea. It worries me."

I turn to Uzume who had, I noticed, distracted me from the question last time. "How about you, Uzume? Anything you would like to say?"

She looks at Bruce while attempting an unreadable expression, but to say that he has stared down the best is putting it lightly. Damn Widow anyway.

"How did you know?" Uzume is practically attempting to hide behind Chiho now.

"I didn't. But I don't believe they would shoot her to get me to come back, and she says that she doesn't know. The only loose thread connected to that room that I know of was you." He shrugs. "It wasn't a for sure thing until now, but since it is out in the open would you care to elaborate?"

She gets a bit of fire in her voice. "Obviously not. If I had wanted to drag this out I would have." She sighs. Turns Chiho around very tenderly. "You remember how your trust fund was nearly gone, and this one hospital was the only one that claimed it could help you?"

Chiho looks confused. "Yes, Uzume-san. I remember."

"Well, that hospital is owned by Higa. He is an Ashikabi with a large number of Sekirei and other Ashikabi working for him. He had been leaning on me pretty hard to do some things for him. Some pretty mean things to other Sekirei. I was trying to tell him wear he could shove it, but... he knew about you. He was basically waiting another month or two until your money ran out and then I would have to do what he said to keep you in the hospital. I think his security was under orders not to let you leave, and when they realized that you were going to they went overboard to keep you there. I am so sorry that you got hurt because of me." She is embracing her younger Ashikabi and has her chin resting on the young girls shoulder as she does.

I breath a sigh of relief and smile.

Uzume looks up from Chiho and snaps at me. "What is it about this that makes you so damn happy?"

I manage to look a little apologetic, though both of my Sekirei bristle a bit at her tone. Unbelievably loyal little munchkins. "Just what it isn't. I get it, that was a bad situation. I don't mean to take it lightly. But it wasn't a government. It probably had nothing to with my past. These are both very good things, Uzume. This has gotten rid of ninety percent of my fears about the whole thing."

Uzume looks both incredulous and distraught. "Papa-san, did you miss the part where I said he has access to a couple of dozen Sekirei?"

"Nope. I heard you, and we will try to avoid a fight. But believe me when I say that it is a lot easier to deal with nosy private individuals, whatever their resources, than it is to fight back against governments."

"What do you mean, 'We' Papa-san? It is my Chiho they shot and me that they were trying to blackmail." Uzume is looking resigned. Hugging Chiho tight, and seeming to collapse in on herself more than a little as she considers what this is going to mean for their immediate future. She had so many plans for what they would do when Chiho was well, and none of them involved staying in this city or dealing with this insane plan. But, with this illness green thing she was now stuck again. A new doctor. A stronger and healthier Ashikabi perhaps, but no less trapped.

Bruce smiles. Shakes his head slowly. "Look, I am not one for posturing. But I have been in similar positions before. I consider you my patients, and my friends. I won't be leaving you, at least until your health is assured and this ridiculous Sekirei plan has been dealt with. If my past holds true then I think I can safely say that the other guy won't either. All things being equal I would really rather there was no conflict at all and I mean that on a level you can't possibly even believe. But that being said, if they come here for a fight they are likely to end up wishing they hadn't.

After a promise from everybody to keep on eye on each other and meet up tomorrow morning in the common room to go to Chiho's storage area, Uzume and Chiho decide to head to bed. Kuno and Yashima hit the baths while Bruce sits in the living room and waits his turn. His thoughts turning to what he needs to do.

Well, the first thing is that he needs a lab, or access to one. The kinds of blood tests and such that he needs to perform on these girls can't be done by mail order. Most of the stuff he would need, nearly all of it really, can be purchased by the layperson. But it is expensive. Some of it hideously expensive. In the past when he had needed to get access to things like this when on the run he had tended to try to get bottom rung jobs in facilities that had them. Hospital janitor and such. Jobs where his being there at odd hours would not be an immediate way to be suspected of wrongdoing. Of course, he wasn't above theft if the cause was just, and this Higa character probably had everything he needed just sitting around. Might be worth looking into later. He looks up from his musings, startled, when the front door opens to admit a young man of slight build. Gray hair, though not the stereotypical salt and pepper color of one who was going gray. More uniform as though this was his normal hair color. A black suit and tie with white button down shirt and very shiny shoes complete the ensemble. He has a very effeminate look. Soft eyes and features. He doesn't seem to notice Bruce immediately, and shuts the front door before turning around to face the living room. He then stops cold, halfway through a step, as he sees Bruce and his eyes go wide.

"Hello there. You must be another renter here. I am Bruce, just moved in up on the second floor." He stands long enough to offer an attempt at a bow. To say that he is not an expert in Asian methods of greeting is something of an understatement.

The suited man squares up his feet and offers a bow of his own. "Welcome, Bruce-san. I am Kagari." He then slides casually around the couch and sits in the chair opposite Bruce. "How are you finding the Izumo Inn?"

Bruce recognizes the small talk for what it is, but decides to accommodate. There is no sense in making enemies in his fellow lodgers. "Oh, it is a nice place. Clean, traditional, and out of the way. Plus, Miya seems to be a very good cook. That is always a plus."

Kagari seems confused for a second, and then shakes his head slightly while wearing a rueful smirk. "I am sorry, Bruce-san, what I meant was how did you find your way here? Miya does not advertise, so it is quite unusual to have a foreign renter here. Sorry I was unclear."

"Oh, yeah, I gotcha. To be honest I am here pretty much at the invitation of Uzume up on the second floor. She has a friend staying with her for awhile that has some health issues and I will be a live in physician for awhile." Kagari seems to be a bit surprised at this turn of events, but either it isn't that unusual or he hides it quickly.

"I see. Well, I wish both you and she the best of luck then. I keep some odd hours, but I am sure I will see you around. No if you will excuse me, I need to get cleaned up and get too bed. It was an early night for me, but a quite busy one." He goes to stand but stops when Bruce shakes his head.

"I am quite sorry to put a wrench in your plan, but my room mates are in there at the moment. They should be out soon, you are welcome to use it directly after them."

Kagari seems less than thrilled, but amiable enough. "Thank you for the warning, Bruce-san. A girlfriend and child?"

Bruce put on a fairly sheepish grin. "No, no, nothing like that. Just a couple of kids I am trying to help out of a fairly sticky situation. Nothing serious, I don't think. But it is a bit cold to be on the streets right now."

Kagari raises an eyebrow. "You brought a couple of street kids to Izumo? Miya was OK with this?" Bruce scowls slightly. "Is there some reason she shouldn't be?"

Kagari holds up his hands, palms out in a placating gesture. "No, no, of course not. It is her inn, she can run it any way she wishes, obviously. Given the rules of the in it is just highly unusual that she would allow a gentleman lodger your age with a pair of young kids that were not blood relations. I mean no disrespect, it just surprised me is all.

"Ah, yes. I remember the speech. The no fraternization bit. Well, the reality is that both of them as well as Uzume herself seem to have all contracted the same illness as her friend, so until their condition stabilizes it is best to keep them all here so I can keep an eye on them. I would ask that you don't spread this around though. Doctor patient confidentiality after all."

Kagari gets an amused smile. "Why should I feel more bound then you concerning your doctor and patient confidentiality?"

Bruce finds his smile a bit strained. "When you see them, I have no doubt that you will quickly learn why I was certain that keeping it a secret outright would fail. I would ask that you don't spread it around is all. As a favor to them."

Kagari offers a polite but confused smile. Then there is a soft call from the hall from Kuno. "Bruce-san, the bath is open, we are heading up to get ready for bed."

"OK kiddo, you two go ahead and try to get some sleep. Another renter has arrived and I have offered him next turn in the baths. I will be running a bit later than I thought."

Yashima's call from the hall sounds more than a bit disgruntled. "Hurry up, Bruce-san."

Kagari gets up from the chair. Bows politely. "Thank you once again, Bruce-san. I shall be swift.

A few minutes later, Kagari walks by the living room to his apartment on the first floor wearing a very nice black bathrobe and Bruce finally gets his chance to soak. The hot water and soap of the traditional Japanese bath seeps into his bones and finally washes away the last of the ache from his most recent incident. Twenty minutes of rest and then a quick scrub down later finds him pulling a fresh towel off the rack, drying, and then wrapping it around himself for the trip back to his room. He is going to need to buy a robe soon if they stay here, it wouldn't do to cause problems with the other tenants.

It was likely too much to hope that they would actually be asleep. As he opens the door to their room he can hear whispered conversation suddenly halt. They both stare at him, a pile of laundry under one arm and a towel around his waist. His chest and shoulders visible. He isn't overbuilt by any stretch. His physical capabilities as the Hulk seem to have no real bearing on the shape he is in as Bruce. But he has spent ten years constantly on the run. Constantly fighting. One step ahead of a fate worse than death, and it shows in his body. Not the carefully sculpted build of a body builder, more the abs and shoulders of someone who might have won triathlons in their youth and chose to maintain that physique as best they could as they got older. They both smile when they see him. Sighing in unison like some kind of tag team of fan girls. He finds the whole thing to be well beyond the outer limits of creepy. He grabs the boxers and t-shirt portions of his only change of clothing and steps into the bathroom to change really quick.

When he gets back into the room proper he makes it a point to pull the sleeping mats apart as the girls had pushed the three of them together. He gets dirty looks from Yashima and a hurt look with optional lip quiver from Kuno but steels his heart for what must be done, puppy dog eyes or no. They are just going to have to deal with the fact that he is an old curmudgeon. Maybe if he can be discouraging enough in the bedroom and supportive enough in other areas he can avoid flushing his morals down the toilette. Or getting them kicked out of Izumo house, that would likely be bad too.

Bruce sighs before he drifts off to sleep. Things were so much simpler before. Angry gods, interstellar threats, and overly ambitious military stooges were much more his specialty than jail bait aliens that were looking to get balls deep into soul bondage.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Waking up was getting to be an interesting thing these day, he mused through the scattered bits of a fading dream. Kuno on his right side as he lay on his back, curled into a tight ball and under his arm, which had wrapped around her and held her close at some point in the night. Yashima on his left, laying on her side with her left arm across his chest and his arm being used as a pillow then wrapped around her shoulders. He was staying with his guns concerning starting every evening with them all separated, but at some point each night they would both make their way over. Comforting and frustrating. Frumforting, maybe. Sure we will go with that.

The trip to Chiho's storage unit last week had unearthed a regular treasure trove of useful equipment. He still needed access to hospital level resources at some point, but he was reasonably certain at this point that they were all going to be alright for awhile. Assuming, of course, that the fact that all three of the infected Sekirei had similar vitals to Chiho was indicative. It isn't like he had an uninfected pool of aliens to use as a basis for comparison. So many things that he didn't know and had no way to go about researching. So annoying.

Standing up without disturbing Kuno was relatively easy, though once the heat of his body was gone she would start squirming back until she bumped into Yashima. She always did. Yashima required a bit more physical effort, but she was usually out of it enough to be easily pliable while he made his escape. Glancing at the clock on the wall, he decides that five really is good enough. It is his turn to do the shopping, and if he can get it done before the rest of the town gets rolling, it will be pretty quick. Of course, that requires hitting the market by six, and it is a half hour walk to get there. So he had best get a move on. Specially if he didn't want an entourage.

Not that he disliked any of the people here, but Bruce was more or less a loner at heart. Being unable to get away from people for a week straight was slowly driving him crazy.

Getting dressed, he grabbed the money that had been left out by the landlady and the list of things she needed for the next day. The walk toward the market is pleasant, if quite cold.

He had been gone for about twenty minutes when Kuno and Yashima both find their eyes opened by an overwhelming feeling of pain that one knows and the other can guess at the cause of. Both scream at the feeling that comes over them, a sound of torment and a desperate need to end whatever is causing it. They are out the front door before anyone else at the inn can even fully understand that something has gone wrong.

Bruce is not quite to the market yet. It is still quite early and very peaceful on the streets. Most of the locals are still asleep as he walks along. He reflects again how all these people seem to eat their weight in a week. It is astounding. As he makes his way the last couple of blocks toward the long strip of open air markets, a girl drops out of the sky and lands in front of him. Bruce stops, while she stands from the crouch she was in after her landing. She is wearing black leather clothes, with a loose cloth over her shoulders and a short skirt. Not that such is needed, but if he did require evidence that she was privy to the plan, the bird symbol on her clothes would certainly do it. The gray hair, despite a younger looking face and of course the sword. Bruce is no expert in Asian martial traditions, but he knows that what she carries isn't a katana. It looks like the bastard offspring of a katana and a claymore. She is also carrying, of all things, another of those damn briefcases. At least he is assuming it is another of the same, because she throws it into his path and draws her sword. He is still just staring at her dumbfounded. This is ridiculous. To know he would be here they must have had Izumo house under observation for the whole damn week.

"Pick it up, monkey. Open it, and answer the phone that is in it. The director would like a word. Or, alternately, don't." Her lips twist into a cold smile that promises pain. "Either he will get what he wants, or I will get what I want. So please, consider your options carefully."

Bruce looks at the situation with as much logic as he can muster. She threw the case away from herself. A good thirty feet. Could be she doesn't want to be close to him. But given all the circumstances, he is guessing she would rather not be close to the case. Bomb. Gas attack. Who knows. But when it is all said and done, he is reasonably sure he can survive the blade if he has to. The case is an unknown and so, since there is nobody else on the street yet to get hurt he gives the thing a wide berth. He crosses to the other side of the road and continues along his route, calling out as he does. "Thank you very much for your efforts, but I would like to be left alone please. Thank you very much."

He sneaks a look back at her and sees that she is smiling as she picks the case back up. She then jumps, and Bruce stops. She lands directly ahead of him. She might have landed on him if he hadn't stopped walking, but as it stands she is about six feet away. She is smiling so widely she looks like her nose might fall in. "Last chance." She drops the case in front of her. "

Bruce sighs. Rubs the bridge of his nose. "Can you tell me why?"

She smirks. "Because your options are to do like I say or to die like I tell you too."

A quick glance around shows the streets are still clear. He knows that if he chooses the change it is far easier to control and a lot quicker to manifest than if it is forced onto him, and it is seeming likely that whatever he does it is going to happen today. Though it should be said that the other reason he decides to embrace his demon is really pretty simple.

Against all odds, nobody he knows and cares for is actually here right now, and if he understands how this miserable contest works, if he doesn't fight her now they will need to later.

Start to finish, the transformation takes three seconds. The first second, she looks confused. The second, she makes a cut across his belly that spills his blood all over the frost covered street. The third she went for his neck, but him gaining two feet of height in the span of a second and a half causes her blow to instead impact his right arm just below the shoulder, where it sinks in until it hits bone, then stops as though she had tried to cut in half a steel beam with a wooden spoon.

The howl of pain is accompanied by a wild cackle of laughter as Karasuba, the Black Sekirei, killer of thousands, leader of MBI's special force of Sekirei murderers, skips back ten feet to reevaluate. The green beast makes a clumsy overhand smash, which she sidesteps easily and then spills a bit more of the beasts blood with a quick slice to his leg. She can see the ground where he hit has been crushed, the dust of the cobblestones adding even more chaos to the scene. She can see his belly and arm healing in real time, and her eyes go wide, her smile wider. This was going to take forever. All that time with no boredom to be had, it is practically heaven. The Hulk swings wildly, it's eyes half closed in pain. Stumbling forward a step on an achilles tendon that has been cut. He can feel a dozen more cuts, one across his eyes. Blinded now, he sweeps his arms around wildly, looking for purchase. Needs to beat this thing. She is dangerous. Could hurt people he cares about. He needs to stop. To stop her.

The cuts come in. Dozens of them. Hundreds. The green giant doesn't stop moving. He doesn't stop trying. But the outcome is in no doubt. More and more critical cuts are made. More blood, more pain. Needs to stop her. Can't think.

The hulk drops to his knees. Confused. This isn't how it was supposed to go. He can't fight. He can barely function. No. it isn't that he can't think. He is thinking too much, and he is going to die for it.

Well. It had once been a wish to end it. He had things to get done before he left, but beggars can't be choosers. He is still pawing blindly at her, head held low.

He doesn't even see her standing to the side, lining up the strike. Between the second and third. The taxidermist won't even believe this one.

Kuno is still over a mile away. Kuno is a Sekirei, yes. But to call her a combatant is not accurate. She is a creature of peace. Her abilities bring peace to others. In the case of her Ashikabi, she had been trying to give him the peace he wanted. That he needed. With a joining of souls and wills, she was able to do so much. With Yashima she was able to do even more for him, to reinforce what she had started. Then she gets the feeling of resignation. The feeling that her Bruce-san is preparing to die. She does the thing she hoped she would never have to do. She had been singing her song of peace to him for a week. He had been getting happier day by day. She cries out as she stops the song. She cuts the bindings. She releases the monster. She crumbles out as the pain is joined by a rage that knocks her to her knees with the sheer visceral hatred that backs it up. Then she crawls. Her Bruce-san will need her when it is over. If he lives.

If... if she didn't kill him.

She weeps.

Yashima doesn't understand what the hell is wrong with Kuno, but there is no time for this. Picking her up and slinging her over the shoulder that isn't carrying the hammer, she makes a leap to a building to for a better purchase. What was her idiot Ashikabi doing running around without his Sekirei? It's like he wanted to die. With a thought, she lowers the mass, and therefore the pull gravity has on her hammer. Carrying her friend as well, she pulls it down to one percent of standard so she can make better speed. Makes it about five pounds.

It will be five thousand when it lands on whatever is doing this, and if they survive that, then she can do this. All. Damn. Day. Apparently, a little green goes a long way.

Karasuba is actually a little disappointed. He looked so impressive at first, and then, just, well... Nothing. Slow, far to careful to use the strength it has properly. Ah well. One more human that isn't hardly worth the effort to kill. At least this one was interesting. The swing is right on. A hundredth of a second, and all her force brought down on a neck. To see it severed cleanly, rolling down the street.

Doesn't happen today.

The thing looks up, one green bloodshot eye staring at her as her blade digs into his scalp and puts a nice crease in his skull. A hand snaps out and grabs the blade of the sword, pulling it forward across his skull, and her closer to him. The other hand comes up off the ground and wraps around her hands, as she struggles to pull the blade free. Her manic smile is accompanied at the last possible moment by widened eyes as she realizes the trap, lets go of her sword and jumps back.

The beast gets to his feet, still staggering slightly but no longer anywhere near defeated. The screaming bellow of defiant rage wakes the city once again, He snaps the sword with his hands, flinging the pieces at her as if to return his pain to the source. Reaching over to the side of the road, he pulls a road sign out of the ground with a single jerk of one hand. Flinging it like a boomerang at the one that needs to die, he then immediately jumps to meet her when she will inevitably have to jump to avoid his attack. He meets her there and swings. She grabs the wrist, uses it as a way to pull herself behind him, and reaches around with a small blade to take an eye while letting out a decidedly enthusiastic laugh. The kind of half scream excitement that bubbles out of your fear during your first time on a new roller coaster.

Then for seemingly no reason at all, she leaps off of him. With a hand to her ear she is yelling at someone. "No, No god damn you Minaka you said I would get to kill it if it didn't cooperate. Me. I don't care what the window is, you shut the damn..." She looks up cursing again the unfairness of the world and leaps away, scrambling through the streets in an effort to put distance between the two of them.

Hulk is boiling with hate and rage. Getting ready to make his first leap, he has a split second to wonder what the shiny thing above is before the hell pain.

Every millimeter of flesh on his body, crisping. Burning in a light show from the heavens as some kind of space based laser tries to deep fry him in superheated agony for a few seconds. Kuno and Yashima see the strike from the heavens. The pain causes Kuno, who has tied her mind far closer to Bruce's, to pass out again. Yashima lands where the blackened form of the other guy is trying to crawl his way out of the hole. Eyes burned shut. Hair gone. Skin cracked and bleeding everywhere, with the blood leaving streamers down his charred form. He gets out of the hole. Stands on the edge. Listens. One eye suddenly snaps open, discolored and barely squinting, but able to look around. Sees nobody that needs killing. Drops to his knees. Then his face. The the sound of ragged breathing is heard coming from the lump of pain.

Yashima lays Kuno next to him, holds her hammer in front of her, and stands guard. She can't think of what else to do, and it would be hard to accomplish much more with tears streaming down her face anyway.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Thanks again for all the reviews. I really do appreciate any and all feedback. I have a direction I want to go with this, but I wanted to get this out of the way now. No. My version of Bruce will not be winging the Psycho. Not happening.

In fact, I am not convinced my version of Bruce is going to be winging anybody else. I am not dead set against it, understand. It just doesn't seem needed. My thought was to run him not as a replacement for Minato, but rather as another character in the story with him. We'll see, the story is young and as per my timeline, I have about five months in world time before the events of the first manga take place anyway.

Thanks again, and have a great day!


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4.

The interesting thing about getting burned, seriously burned, like OMG flambe style, is that the populous will never see you the same again. Little old ladies will make an effort to walk you across the street out of pity, possible love interests will stammer out apologies that it is them, not you, and even the guy at the DMV winces as he takes your picture. Bruce won't have that problem, as the Hulk's regeneration is one of the strongest forces known. The other interesting thing is that it doesn't actually hurt as bad as you might think. Oh, it hurts. Don't get me wrong. It hurts pretty bad, truth be told. But it doesn't hurt as bad as it looks. The reason for this is that all the nerve endings that would have been used to pass all this pain along to the brain are either up in smoke themselves or just not functional due to severe roasting damage. Now while this is not exactly an unknown phenomena, what might be less known is that having a super normal healing factor that cares far more about the organism survival than it does comfort means that the first priority is poking shiny new little nerve endings throughout the mass of destroyed flesh in an effort to get things mobile and working again, assess damage, and allocate resources.

All of which means that as the charred monstrosity lays there in the street as a giant blackened speed bump, the pain is increasing by the second. The damage and pain is keeping him from becoming Bruce, the lack of a need to destroy anything means that there is no need to move and make the pain worse. So laying there like a great lump is the best option he can see. The occasional quiet groan of agony as he feels his body slowly putting things to right. A half dream, half hell, half conscious state that breaks its own rules simply through each piece being so important that it has to be three halves. The more healing that happens, the quicker the form can continue the process. In the end, though it seems far longer to him, Bruce manages to become himself again in a little less than fifteen minutes. As he does so and the last of the pain fades away, blessed sleep overtakes him.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Waking up in this room with no idea how he got here is about one more occurrence from being habitual, he considers wryly as he takes in his surroundings. But as he lays there, he realizes that something is different about this time. Something is different than nearly every other time that the Hulk has come out to play.

He remembers everything.

Well, almost everything. He remembers the transformation, and the early portion of the combat. So much damage in such a short time. Incredible. Amazing that he survived it, really. He remembers not using shock wave style attacks to knock his foe off balance for fear of what it would do to the surrounding buildings. He remembers making it a point to try to limit the collateral damage. Thinking back, he recalls with precision the point at which he had been blinded, albeit temporarily.

He remembers with a pain in his heart the exact instant that he was ready to give up. Let it go. Die.

Then he heard it. The sound of Kuno's voice from somewhere in the back of his soul as she cried, as she stopped the song that he had become so accustomed to that he didn't even hear it anymore as it did what it could to keep him calm. Keep him happy. The return of the anger, the all consuming need to destroy and overcome as she swept away the dainty scaffold she had been laboriously constructing around the core of his rage. The last thing he can recall is her fading voice tearfully begging forgiveness in his mind as the power in his body surges. As the other guy reasserts himself.

He lays there considering what he has learned about his condition. He had known for a long time that the angrier he got, the stronger he got. The tougher he got. The less he cared about pain, and the quicker his body would put what damage got through to rights. He can't remember specifics, generally. But ten years of nightmare fuel in the form of post hulk impressions had left him with some conclusions. What he had never had an opportunity to look into was what the Hulk would be without anger. Now he knows.

The Hulk on prozac is about worthless in comparison to the standard version.

Bruce can feel Yashima on his left. But nothing on his right. This gives him pause, so he opens his eyes and turns to the right. Next to his sleeping mat he can see Kuno on her knees. Looking at the floor with her hands palms down on her thighs. He has no idea how long he has been out, but it feels like it has been awhile. Based on the puffy eyes and wet streaks down the front of her shirt he is guessing that she spent a large portion of that time sitting in that spot, in that position, crying. She must have heard something, because she looks up at him a few moments after he opens his eyes. Her mouth opens as if she is trying to speak, but nothing comes out. Bruce waits. Gives her a chance to collect herself a bit.

When he does finally hear her, the words hurt him worse than the laser did.

"Kuno is sorry, Bruce-san. So sorry. Kuno tried to help, She really did." Her voice drops back off the audible scale towards the end. She tries to talk again, and on the second try she manages to get something out. "Your anger. It hurt you so much. Always hurting you. Kuno tried to soften it. To take it away. Kuno nearly killed you. She didn't understand that Bruce-san needs his anger. Kuno is so sorry." She lowers her eyes again, and her shoulders that already ache from crying begin to heave again. She doesn't even ask forgiveness, apparently feeling that such a thing is beyond hope.

Bruce looks at her. Reaches out a hand and gently places it on hers. "Kuno. It is never a bad thing to try to help. But next time, ask first before you do something like this. Understand?"

If possible, Kuno makes herself look even more wretched as she looks up at him. Her face is an absolute wreck of tears and snot running down her face. Her hair is dirty, tangled, and covered in smokey residue. Her clothes are blackened with soot, probably from when they cleaned him up, he guesses. She nods, not daring to speak.

Then Bruce pulls her in to hold her to his chest. She buries her face against his blanket and her shoulders shake from the discharge of hours of fear that her promised Ashikabi would now hate her. For his part, Bruce hold her tight and gently pats her on the back. He makes the occasional sound of encouragement, to try and reinforce that it is going to be alright. When he does finally look again to the left, he can see Yashima is looking at him with a contented smile. "Is Bruce-san feeling better?"

Bruce offers up a half smile. "Well, not dead yet. Though I think we are going to hold off on testing anybody until tomorrow. I think we need some time to calm down. Do me a favor and tell Uzume and Chiho, alright?"

She stands. "Yes, Ashikabi-san. They will be disappointed, as am I. But tomorrow will come soon enough." Before she leaves, she places her enormous hammer laying on the floor next to him in such a way that the handle passes over his body, pressing down slightly, but not uncomfortably, on his stomach. "Eh, Yashima? Could you move that please? It will make getting up a problem for me." Especially with Kuno once again halfway to crying herself to sleep, he was pretty much locked in unless he woke her up. They had weighed her hammer last week, or rather they had tried. When she was touching the thing the weight of it seemed to fluctuate to accommodate her whims, but when she wasn't it always capped out an industrial scale they had noticed in the market that went to four hundred and twenty five pounds. How much it actually weighed he wasn't even sure.

Yashima shrugs, for all the world seeming to truly feel for his predicament, and then she turns back towards the door and Bruce catches just a millisecond worth of a sarcastic half smile. "That is unfortunate that you will be unable to wander off again today without me, Ashikabi-san. Worry not though, for I will follow your instructions and return soon!" She then makes a mad dash for the door, as though clearing it before I have a chance to lodge a formal complaint will somehow make restraining me somehow more tolerable. Bruce sighs. Well, It could be worse. Having somebody care enough to be truly annoying is probably the least of his problems.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"Well, I guess the first thing to mention..." Uzume sighs with something between regret and resignation. "My Norito is gone."

The next day all the green eyed tenants of Izumo house and Bruce were sitting around on a couple of park benches in a secluded area of a north side park. While not terribly late in the day, it being December the sun was quite low in the sky and the chill was creeping in on them mercilessly despite the winter wear they all had on. Bruce glances her way to see what the fuss is all about.

"Norito? Is that like a Dorito from Norway or something?"

Uzume looks at him as though he has lost his mind. Tough crowd.

"A what from where? No. My Norito. After we are winged by our Ashikabi, if we kiss to reaffirm our bond we can temporarily gain access to a next level power for a short time. To give you an idea, if our standard power is a stick of dynamite, our Norito would be a roll of like four of them, but it would only last for one use before we would be back to basics again. Since your toxin saved Chiho and then she reaffirmed our bond that night, my Norito has been gone. It is supposed to be the game changer, that thing we can do at the last second to protect our Ashikabi, and now it is gone. It feels like I lost a leg almost."

Bruce gets a thoughtful expression. They are all in the dark as far as how his problem is going to effect them. But to say that it is unusual for those that survive the initial exposure to become weaker as a result would be a bit of an understatement.

"So what happens when you reaffirm then?"

Uzume grimaces. "I get winged, but instead of the Norito I get some kind of green blood vessel disgusting skin condition. Makes my veins pop out and turn green for about an hour. It doesn't seem to hurt other than it took Chiho three days to get used to it enough to want to keep kissing me after it happened."

Chiho, who had been mostly unresponsive to this point, feels her cheeks redden as she opens her mouth to protest, then realizes that she really doesn't want to keep the conversation here anyway and looks down.

Uzume looks curiously at Bruce. "What happens to Kuno and Yashima when you reaffirm the bond?"

Bruce scowls, glancing over at his girls before he speaks as he knows precisely how this is going to be taken. "No idea. Going around kissing girls that ought to be enjoying their senior year of high school is pretty high on my list of things that guys my age shouldn't be doing. Besides, what if they responded poorly? What if they get an aneurysm or something from the nasty green vessels you are talking about? Not worth the risk."

Uzume looks more than a little angry. "What, Chiho and I are the guinea pigs here? Are you a doctor or a mad scientist?"

Bruce looks at her. "Really? I can forgive the first time she kissed you after she got out of the hospital. There might have been a good indicator that it was ill advised, but love can occasionally make a bad risk seem to be worth taking. But if you expect me to feel bad for not mentioning that it might be a dumb idea to suck face after the first time put you in a coma for four hours, then you are sadly mistaken. It's not like I put you up to it."

Uzume looks down at that. "Well, when you put it that way..."

"I do. Now, that being said, how many times have you reaffirmed since then?"

Chiho turns a quite lovely shade of bright pink, and Uzume smacks her lips and says "Lots!"

Bruce nods, running the numbers in his head. "I am guessing that it is safe to say that rampant spit swapping is likely to continue regardless of my recommendation at this point?"

Uzume grins so wide Bruce is pretty sure she is developing a flip-top head, and even Chiho smiles a little, though her cheeks are at this point going for a delightful shade of fire engine red.

Bruce sighs. "Yeah, that is what I thought. If it is going to happen anyway, lets go ahead and find out what it actually is doing."

"You mean besides making me hideous and even more green?" Uzume seems pretty caught up on the whole green vein thing.

"Yeah. First lets get some baseline." Bruce sits down on the concrete bench, motioning to Uzume. "Lets see what you do."

Uzume looks a little shocked. "Me? Right now? Why me?"

Bruce just looks at her for a few seconds. "Because after a dry run, you two get to have sloppy make outs before we start finding out what the difference is. For science!"

The last bit in a slightly raised and much more excited tone. When nobody else seems to get it, he shakes his head in mock disgust.

"Oh-kay then crazy person." Uzume says, giving Bruce an odd look. Then her clothes change.

Not change as in she changes her clothes. Change as in the structure and utility of the clothing she has changes, dramatically. Instead of a coat and pants, she is suddenly wearing a white linen veil, with wide strips of cloth hanging about her, moving as though of their own accord. She is much less covered, as besides the veil itself she looks the be basically wearing the equivalent of a white, two piece swimsuit.

It probably says bad things about Bruce's life that the idea of somebody having funky animated clothing as a super power doesn't even make it to the strange list in his mind.

She then starts a demonstration by attacking a few trees in the park. As she does so, her smile gets wider and wider. As she seems to be having more and more fun, Bruce finally gets curious. "Did something change?"

She looks at the rest of the group. "Yeah, Papa-san, something has definitely changed. I haven't really needed to go nuts like this since then, but now that I am playing around with it I am definitely stronger. And I am not getting tired like I used to when I would practice like this in the labs."

Yashima speak up at this point. "That was the main thing I noticed. It used to be that manipulating the hammer weight would wear me out after awhile. I would end up dragging it along behind me after a few hours. Now, there is no issue at all. I can sprint and swing with this thing all day."

Bruce looks at the damage she is doing with a critical eye. Against a normal human, the cloth spears and crushing grip that were both easily stripping bark from the trees and putting dents into the wood beneath would be devastating. Against most of the things that the Hulk has had to deal with, she would be little more than a never ending dental floss dispenser. Though, he admits to himself, it might be a wash anyway because she is unbelievably quick. If she played a defensive game rather than trying to attack, most of his regular sparring buddies would likely never get their hands on her to start with.

Bruce reaches into his pocket and flips out the tiny blade on his multitool. "OK, Uzume. Do me a favor and give yourself a nick on the arm with this knife so we can see what, if any, advanced healing you have.

"Are you sure? Unless it is a new thing, I don't have any kind of advanced healing. My advanced healing is not getting hurt."

Bruce shakes his head. "I really think we should test it, probably on both you and Chiho to be honest. Fast healing is a defining characteristic of what makes me tick, it is highly likely it could have been passed along."

She takes the knife and gives herself a shallow, one inch cut on her forearm.

Then everybody stands there staring at her arm like a bunch of freaks. The reaction is slow, but as Bruce pulls out a small bottle of water to clean up the wound for better visibility they can all see the small cut getting smaller and smaller. When it stops bleeding, Bruce hits it with the water and everyone there watches the small red line go to white, and then disappear altogether.

Uzume looks shocked. "That... That is definitely new, Papa-san. That is amazing."

"OK. Just for giggles, do me a favor and do a quick strength test. Try to pick up Yashima's hammer. Yashima, assuming she can pick it up, slowly increase the weight until she has to put it down and then give me your best guess as to what that limit is."

They seem willing, and the test is performed without any problems. "Bruce-san, she seemed to be straining a bit at what I am guessing was about five hundred and fifty kilograms, but she didn't have to put it down for another hundred. Call it six hundred and fifty to seven hundred?"

Three quarter ton. Not bad, Uzume. Not bad at all.

"OK, now for sloppy make outs and repeat."

Uzume gets a decidedly predatory look on her face and Chiho has just enough time to look shocked and let out a little "Eeep!" sound before Uzume leaps on her and she is trussed up in bolts of cloth and held to Uzume by cloth straps that completely conceal both of them from view. The pure white linen and light wings of Uzume spread wide behind her, shot throughout with streaks of green. Angry blotches that obviously do not belong defiling something so pure. Then the wings fade away and the cloth begins to unwrap them both. I can see that Chiho has shut her eyes, giving in completely to the moment. Held off the ground and letting Uzume, with cloth and her arms, mold her to her Sekirei's body. Uzume was not lying. She has angry green veins over much of her body, but centered around her eyes, and as such her face is absolutely covered in them. She slowly lowers Chiho to the ground, gazing at the young woman fondly as the eyes of her young lover begin to flutter open. Chiho attempts to stammer some kind of rebuke about how this shouldn't happen in public, but loses her nerve and leans forward to hold Uzume tight to her. By now the cloth wrap is completely undone and Uzume steps back from Chiho. "Hey, Papa-san. Let me see that knife again."

I hand her the knife, rather curious myself. She gives her arm a quick and shallow cut. We wait for blood, green or otherwise, but get nothing. She looks a bit surprised, then tries again a bit harder.

In order to get her to bleed she ends up needing to use the awl attachment, and a vicious stab in the arm. She manages maybe a quarter inch of penetration, and it heals almost instantly. She is grinning like a mad woman at this point. When she goes after the trees, she is doing far more than stripping bark and making dents, by using her cloth she is able, after a minute or two of cloth spears to weaken the trunk, to grapple with one and snap it off at the base.

Her strength check is off the charts. Her three quarter ton from before skyrockets to a solid two tons.

Bruce looks at her. "So, instead of a one and done Norito, you get an hour a shot of this? I am not sure if I should apologize or not."

She looks a bit abashed. "No, Papa-san. I guess this will be OK. I will need to practice with it though. Right now I can honestly say I don't really understand my own abilities very well, even without the kiss I am stronger and tougher than I used to be. With it, well. If my ability without Norito before was a three of ten, and with was a ten, than right now my standard is a five and my new Norito is an hour at an eight, with extra toughness and regeneration on the side. It's a fair trade. More than fair, really."

Uzume gives me a dirty look when I douse it in alcohol, wipe it down, and then hand Chiho the knife.

"We need to know." Uzume looks a bit depressed. "I know, I know. I just don't like to see her hurt."

Chiho takes the knife, grits her teeth, and gives herself a light cut on the arm. It does bleed, but not for long. If anything, her healing rate is probably higher than Uzume' is without her Norito. Her strength test is an astonishing half ton as well. It would likely have been more if she had been healthier before her transition, and as she gets stronger from being out and about rather than bedridden, it is almost a given that she will be getting more powerful as time goes on.

"Chiho, I think it would be in everybody's best interests if you were to start practicing with the Sekirei now and again. Hopefully you never have to do any kind of fighting, but if you do it would be better if you had some idea what you were doing."

Chiho looks at me, her head cocked in curiosity. "Will you be training as well, Bruce-san?"

I shake my head. "Sorry kiddo, I can't. Wish I could, but the first time anybody accidentally hit me too hard in a spar... Well, it just isn't worth the risk. Honestly, as bad as it is if you have to fight, my getting involved is probably even worse."

She seems to accept this as an appropriate explanation, and then we move on to Yashima.

Her baseline healing and strength are both higher than Uzume, though the speed of the veiled Sekirei leaves her far behind. I attribute this discrepancy to the fact that Chiho is a far weaker, if always active, version of myself. The power of her hammer strikes though is absolutely unreal. Through some kind of manipulation that would cause Newton and Einstein to enter into a suicide pact, she has the ability to swing that thing as though it weighs five pounds, and then in the last half second before impact, losing absolutely no velocity, crank the weight of the thing to around two and a half tons. How she doesn't snap the handle off I have no idea. The resulting blow, given the strength and speed she possesses, would be roughly equivalent to somebody dropping a 1960 Ford Galaxie from orbit. True, she is slower than some Sekirei I have seen. But like the Hulk, most of the time she will only have to hit once. Kuno is far weaker, being about as strong as Chiho, though her regeneration is about on par with Yashima. Her power though, that takes a bit of explaining.

"OK, Kuno, what do you do again?" Bruce is shaking his head, as though trying to clear the cobwebs.

"Kuno sings a song of confusion and weakness. It makes enemies weaker, and not know what they are doing as well. When Kuno was in the lab, before she was released, the doctors said it was like sugar crashing while tripping balls. Kuno isn't sure what that means though.

Bruce blinks. "So you have no actual offense, you act more as a biological counter measure for enemy biologicals. Interesting. Is it safe to test here against somebody?"

"Kuno doesn't know. It would have been questionable before, but now? Kuno thinks it might be a risk not worth taking."

Bruce thinks about that for a minute. "That's fair. I can see that. Well, it is getting dark. We should probably start getting back to the Inn."

Yashima looks irritated. "But Bruce-san, what about my Norito? We need to check it at least and find out what is going on there, don't we?"

"Nope. Sorry kiddo. If we had access to a hospital and appropriate equipment, maybe. But here? To big a chance of things going wrong and no way to fix it if they do."

She looks decidedly unthrilled, but doesn't argue the point.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The walk back to the Inn is fairly quick, mostly as it is getting cold enough that nobody is excited about being outside so they all make good time.

They are even all in pretty high spirits by the time they make it there, in the situation that they are all in randomly finding out that you are stronger than you thought you were tends to be pretty good news.

That ends as soon as Bruce opens the door to the in.

Sitting on the couch directly across from the door, now staring at him with curiosity is a rather scruffy looking gentleman wearing a white t-shirt and faded blue jeans. On either side of him, dressed in Somewhat faded but otherwise clean jeans and t-shirts of their own, are a pair of long black hair sporting twins, one of which has her arm in a cast. They look less curious. More panicked.

"Oh god, Seo, that's the guy! Broke my arm with a car!"

The landlady is sitting in a chair off to the the left, by the door to the kitchen. She looks at Bruce with interest. The twins are already standing to defend themselves when Bruce puts his hands up. "Peace, please. What happened before was a misunderstanding, I am sure."

One of the twins makes a response as Bruce is taking off his shoes and stepping to the side to let everybody else in. "How in the hell did I misunderstand you breaking my arm in three places by kicking a car at me? And lets not forget what you did to that poor bastard you mutilated before that."

Bruce just looks at her, wraps an arm around his girls' shoulders as they edge their way in front of him, and makes a completely deadpan response.

"You mean the one that shot me because he didn't like my attempts to get him to stop you two from killing Yashima before she even had an Ashikabi? The MBI employee? That guy? Forgive my lack of tears at his loss."

Their Ashikabi, while still obviously interested in what is going on, is starting to give Miya somewhat guarded looks. "Girls, how about we calm down eh? Nothing is going to happen here anyway. Not with Miya here. We came, we will have a fine meal, and we will leave. There is no need for violence at Izumo House." He puts emphasis on the last few words, and the twins finally stop looking at him in some flavor of disgust and get his point. Immediately ignoring Bruce and company, they both turn and start apologizing to Miya, bowing over and over again in turn like somebody replaced their spines with rubber. Miya just smiles behind her hand, but glances at Bruce curiously from time to time as she does so.

Having apparently decided that the immediate problem has been dealt with, Seo turns back to Bruce as he is sitting down in the chair opposite Miya. Kuno takes her standard position on the floor in front of him leaning against his legs and Yashima placing her hammer on the floor to his left and sitting cross legged on it, sharing the chair armrest with Bruce. Chiho and Uzume take up position on the second couch, with Chiho sitting very delicately on one end, and Uzume proceeding to use up the remainder, using Chiho's lap as a pillow as she stretches out on it and sighs contentedly.

"So, kicking cars at people? I have heard of worse hobbies I suppose. Names Seo. Nice to finally meet you." He makes a brief nod from his seated position.

"Likewise, I suppose. I am Bruce. For the record, I am sorry about what happened to your friend." He gives the broken winged Sekirei a nod and apologetic look. "It wasn't really my intention for anybody to get hurt. I was more interested in seeing to it that nobody did, if truth be told. I just got a little excitable I guess."

One of the twins pipes up at that. "Yeah, excitable and three feet taller and green and built like a dump truck. A steroid abusing dump truck."

"Yeah, about that." Seo looks around. "None of my business, but why is it that both your Sekirei and Uzume have these funky green eyes now? And Uzume, were you planning to introduce me to your lovely Ashikabi?"

Uzume looks a bit stunned, as though she hadn't considered that Seo would somehow know that Bruce wasn't her Ashikabi, and perhaps even more importantly, that Chiho wasn't a Sekirei with her eyes like they were. As she is trying to collect her thoughts to respond, Bruce steps in first.

"Well, Seo, the thing is that you pretty much hit the nail on the head with the first part of your question."

Seo looks a bit confused. "Huh?"

Bruce smiles. A friendly, if slightly forced and certainly definitive smile. "It really isn't any of your business."

Seo takes a moment to think about that, and then erupts in a bark of laughter. "Well, I guess when I am right, I am right! So tell me, Bruce, what do you think of the Sekirei plan?"

Bruce tries to hide the depth of his disgust. He is not sure how successful he is, but notes that Miya has chosen this moment to go check on the food and is hiding her expression behind her hand as she does.

"What do I think of it? I think it is cruel and stupid, and whoever came up with it should be force fed their own intestines." he manages to keep his response fairly close to monotone, but the four still in the room that know him look at him strangely. To hear him say something so dark about another person is fairly out of character. Monotone or not, it is clear to them that he is fairly serious.

Seo gives Bruce a bit of a nod and wink combo. "Yeah, you are not alone in that. The whole thing is just stupid. But until we figure out how to end the madness, may as well play to win."

Uzume finally breaks into the conversation here. "This is my Ashikabi Chiho. Be nice to her or I will destroy you." Chiho responds to this threat of violence in her defense by lightly slapping her on the belly once and then slowly rubbing the pain away while Uzume seemingly dissolves into a state of bliss and hums a fairly close approximation of a purr.

"Please forgive Uzume, Seo-san. I think she says such things for attention sometimes. I will have to speak with her later about her public behavior."

Seo offers a grin. "If this is your punishment method kid, I am not sure how successful your talks are going to be. Looks like you are offering about ten carrots per stick."

Chiho looks curiously where he nods, and as if she hadn't even realized that she was still rubbing her Sekirei quite low on her tummy, she jerks her hand away and places it on the back of the couch.

Bruce shakes his head with a wide grin that he can't manage to hide. If looks could kill, Uzume would be cleaning up bits of Seo for a week.

The call from the dining room comes from Miya. "Dinner is ready, if some of my legitimate lodgers could please set the table while the broke moochers sit in the living room, that would be lovely."

Seo looks like he is somewhere between annoyed and grinning, somehow, as he calls out. "Oh, don't be like that Miya, we can help." Bruce notes as he begins to stand himself that despite his protest, Seo makes no effort to move. A few seconds later as Yashima is opening the door, a newspaper rolled into a tube flies out of the kitchen. Bruce notes somewhat clinically that it flies straight, with a spin only in the way that a well thrown football would spiral. He is also astonished by both the speed and the very solid 'THUNK' sound it makes as it leaves an angry red circle on Seo's forehead and then falls in his lap. Seo takes a moment to try to rub away the pain, then picks up the newspaper, removes the rubber band, and unrolls it to take a look.

"Really Miya? The help wanted section?"

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The meal is pleasant enough with no further outbursts from anybody. Though it should be noted that the twins never stop eying Bruce suspiciously, as though convinced that the second they take their eyes off of him he will suddenly sprout into a giant and murder somebody. Bruce attempts small talk with Seo, but whenever the topic rolls over to the Sekirei plan, the only thing that the two have in common, Miya begins to look annoyed and Seo responds by changing the subject.

The amount of respect that he has for the landlady is kind of strange, but then he is here as a guest and the Japanese are known for a highly developed sense of propriety. Bruce decides not to dwell on it.

Soon after the meal, Seo and his two lightning bugs leave. Though they were allowed to help clean up, and Seo does take the newspaper with him when he goes. It almost has the feel of a ritual performed regularly. Guessing there is history there somewhere, Bruce decides not to pry unless somebody else brings it up.

As they had all been out testing their powers earlier, the bath is full to overflowing not long after the meal as the four make their way there, and Bruce once more finds himself waiting on the couch. Considering what he has learned today, he doesn't feel nearly as worried as he might have before. Love it or hate it, the green machine in their bodies was working the miracles it was wont to do. While there were undoubtedly bad match ups for his girls, any fight that goes long his ladies should start to have an edge as their increased stamina and regeneration became a factor. If he is being honest he kind of considers Uzume and Chiho in the category of his girls, even if he probably shouldn't. They are all so young, even Uzume. Too young to be stuck fighting for their lives and loved ones for the sake of some stupid game run by some ridiculous rich loony with too much free time on his hands.

Makes his ass tired to think about it.

He makes his bath fairly quick tonight. The company had pushed dinner quite late, and with nothing particularly to do he is mostly interested in just getting to bed.

Entering the bedroom, he makes it a point to pull the sleeping mats apart again, and reiterate his request to sleep alone.

There is a grumbled response that fades far to quickly for them to be seriously considering his request, but he doesn't push it.

Laying back with his head on the pillow, he is asleep fairly quickly.

Bruce is not a particularly light sleeper, but he does find that at some point in the night something is bothering him enough to open his eyes. He then immediately shuts them, as somebody has placed cloth over the top portion of his face. Releasing the hold he had ended up having on Kuno, he plucks it off his face to see that the night light has been left on. Just enough to barely see by. Glancing at the cloth in his hand now he wonders why in the hell one of his girls decided to cover his face with a shirt that she had sweated in all day.

Then he looks down to Kuno and sees that she has the same Green veins on every piece of skin that he can see that Uzume did. Turning, he can see that Yashima is the same in her customary position on his left.

Kuno reaches an arm out to turn off the night light. Plucks the shirt out of his hands and tosses it to the laundry pile. Then she speaks. "Yashima, would you please tell Bruce-san that we are adult members of our species, we are not afraid to kiss who we want to kiss, and unwillingness to see us as anything more than china dolls is getting really annoying?"

There is a giggle from his other side. "Are you sure he needs to hear it Kuno? Our Ashikabi is quite bright for a human, he has probably figured that all out. Besides, if we push him too hard he will probably become all prideful and go sleep on the couch or something."

"Kuno thinks you may be right, Yashima. We will choose to not do that for the sake of Bruce-sans misplaced sense of duty toward us and his pride. For now."

There are further giggles from Yashima, and Kuno lazily reaches up to gently hook the arm of her Ashikabi back to her, letting him place it around her once again when he gets the idea of where this is going.

Bruce spends some time staring at the ceiling wondering why he, possibly the strongest thing that at least two dimensions has ever known, feels about as powerless as a kitten with muscular dystrophy against a pair of teen girls.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Another chapter done.

Thanks again for any and all responses. I have read them. I haven't responded to them because truthfully there hasn't been much in the way of questions to respond to, but now that this chapter is done I can make reference to a couple at least.

First, Yes. Hulk was very, very nerfed during his fight with Karasuba. Thanks for noticing, but there was a reason. I hope I have made clear now what the reason was.

That said, the same post made note that only very special metals and mystic items could hurt the hulk. MBI has near limitless resources and for whatever reason feels the need to arm women with medieval weapons that in addition to swinging a sword can also bench an SUV. The likelihood that those weapons would be made of standard steel is abysmally tiny. I am not saying that Hulk on his best day wouldn't beat Karasuba. As a matter of fact I think in the last two chapters I have made it clear that barring huge levels of interference he would. Just that when it was done it is highly likely he would know he had been in a fight.

As for possible other winging, Kochou is already under Higa's thumb. She is the Number 22 that he calls at the end of chapter 2. We will be getting back to her later. Kusano is slated for Minato. I just don't feel any need to muddle with the original story extensively. Hell, Bruce likely won't even be staying at Izumo by then. I love the character of Akitsu as well. Really I do. But she is, bar none, the most commonly fiddled with character in Sekirei fanfic. People take pity on her and screw with her story so often it is almost a given when you start reading one that she will end up bonded somehow through some contrivance that proves that love will conquer all. I am not knocking it, I love those stories. I just want this one to be something different is all.

Your other suggestion I am keeping in mind. Haven't decided yet. Don't get your hopes up.

For everybody else that just comments on things, I appreciate the effort. Thanks much! Probably be a few days to a week for the next one unless next week goes different than I expect, but I am not done here by a long shot. Promise.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

One month later

Never going to get used to always having an entourage like this, Bruce muses as he steps into the building. Also never going to get used to being so damn big. Hulk is big, no question. But Bruce is just about average for where he is from, at a smidgen under six feet tall. This puts him four to five inches over the average male where he is now and nearly a foot taller than the bulk of the females. Kuno is a tiny slip of a thing next to him, at about five feet and ninety five pounds. Even Yashima, the stronger of the two by far is nearly identical at just slightly taller and less than a pound lighter.

He towers over the vast majority of the people he is surrounded by here.

It weirds him out constantly.

But today is a good day. Today is payday for the job he never would have thought he would get. A bit of an odd opening cropped up in the schools recently though. Apparently, one thing that MBI has done in an effort to keep their absolutely ridiculous machinations from being found out by the rest of the world is to stop reissuing work visas within the city limits. Probably in an effort to keep any accidental fatalities from getting investigated by governments they don't already own. But that means that the schools in the city are willing to be a bit lax in the background checks when hiring English teachers. Not what he would prefer to be teaching, if he was honest about it. But it gets him a payday, and it gets him on the campus every couple of weeks when he scores a substitute gig at one of the colleges. Other opportunities will come as he makes a name for himself, he is already assisting a couple of grad students with a paper on the possibilities of using nuclear waste as a low intensity power source. Basically making collecting surfaces that would soak up this radiation much like a solar panel soaks up solar radiation but not being restricted by the day and night cycle and able to be kept out of the weather. It will fail, of course, being far too low intensity to justify the cost and too dangerous to justify at all, even assuming that they can get it to work. But it is getting his foot in the door.

Enough about that though, as this is payday, or more accurately the first Saturday after payday, and he is walking into a covered shopping center with his Sekirei. Basically a big warehouse full of one and two man operation style stalls. To Bruce's eyes it looks like a swap meet or the retail area of a convention, but apparently this kind of thing is pretty popular here. He has two primary goals today. The first, and by far the most important, is to do something nice for these two. They have been training unbelievably hard, Kuno having decided and convinced Yashima that if she can't make his anger just go away by giving him the equivalent of a constant psychic lullaby then the only way to keep him from his own pain is to deal with any altercation so quickly and decisively that he simply doesn't have time to get upset about it. To that end, they have been training constantly against each other, against Uzume and sometimes even Chiho. Even the landlady got into it a bit, as she is apparently quite good with what Bruce supposes is her late husbands katana. This training takes place anytime Bruce is teaching, which has been ten hours a day and six days a week for the last three weeks. The two escort him to the school he is working at, make sure he has the phone Uzume picked up for him when he said he was looking for work and that it is charged. Then they both give him a hug and wish for him to have a good day at work. They always show up within ten minutes of him calling to say that his day is over, and then the three of them head home. The travel for the three of them is by public transit, though Bruce is not sure they are bothering with it when he isn't there with them. The two could probably make better time running or even leaping around the city than they could on a bus.

He doesn't press the issue.

The second reason is that Bruce is starting to get more than a little frantic. When these two both dedicated themselves to him he was fairly sure it was a way to get out of their respective previously bad situations, and that once they calmed down they would start poking around for a better fit. Yes, he hadn't forgotten what Uzume said, bond for life, scorned become depressed and suicidal, so on and so forth. You know what though? Marriage is supposed to be for life too. It wouldn't make any damn sense for a species to evolve in such a way as to cut off a chance to pass along genetic code to the next generation over somebody just turning out to be an asshole. It just doesn't track for him. But despite his firm belief that they are making more of this than there needs to be, the fact is that as time goes on the two are getting closer to him if anything. Closer and far more comfortable about vocalizing, loudly and with a shocking lack of modesty or decorum whatsoever, exactly how they feel about how this joining, bonding thing of theirs was supposed to go. So the hope is that by getting out into the world a lot more now that he actually has some money to do things they will be exposed to more people, make some friends, discover their budding sexuality in the backseat of a cramped car on a deserted road like normal teens. Based on how forward they are getting, he has no faith that they will have the ability to wait for any kind of marriage. It seems possible though that a car, campsite, or love hotel with someone their own age could be plausible.

So far the only one that seems to believe that is him, but he is willing to dream anyway.

He gives each of them a quarter of what is left after they activate phones for each of them, and promises not to leave the building without letting them know, shooing them away to go do their own shopping for clothes or whatever.

Yashima does look a little silly carrying around that hammer, but oddly, or perhaps predictably, nobody seems inclined to give her a hard time about it. He watches, smiling fondly, as they disappear into the crowd.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Two hours later, Bruce is about done picking through the random piles of techno trash at a booth that proclaims to sell vintage electronics. He hasn't made much in the way of purchases, but that is largely because he is hoping to save aside some money and have a bankroll of sorts in the even that things get ugly. He is just about to pull out his phone and call the two back to the entrance for the walk home when there is a load crashing sound from somewhere on the other side of the building. Looking towards the back, he can see that there is now a hole in the wall about twenty feet up letting in the evening light, and over the sound of screams and the many feet running his way he can still hear the meaty thump of whatever luckless person that had apparently just been thrown through a wall made as they impacted the unforgiving concrete floor. Bruce starts making his way towards the sound at the best possible speed through a horde of people all going the opposite direction., as it is obvious that somebody there needs help, and with his luck it'll end up being one of his girls. Then someone appears in the hole in the wall.

He is tall, for a Japanese man. Bruce guesses his height at around six foot, although the way he is crouching in the hole makes it difficult to be accurate. He has a slender build, delicate face, and is carrying a sword of some kind. Slender metal, straight blade. Still sheathed. His mop of gray hair is definitely askew, though the warehouse was until recently maintaining positive pressure from the heating system, so there is a lot of artificial wind going by him. As Bruce closes the distance, he sees the man turn his head to the side, talking to somebody outside while keeping an eye on the interior.

"There are a lot of people in here. Very exposed." He is delivering the information in a measured tone, though based on his expression it would be likely he is expecting to be ignored.

"I don't care, Mutsu, get me number forty four! She is a physical type that doesn't just hit things, that makes her special! I need her in my collection!"

"Yes Ashikabi-san. As you wish." His response is given as he lightly hops down the twenty feet to the floor. As he drops down, a second person appears in the hole, this one a brunette woman wearing a black gown and carrying a scythe, of all things. The first, Mutsu apparently, seems to be fairly calm if motivated. This second one has a sadistic grin that stretches from ear to ear and there is blood dripping from her weapon.

By the time Bruce weaves through the people and displays to make it to the far side of the building, things have already gotten ugly. Most of the people have cleared out by this point. There are a few whose curiosity has gotten the better of them and are peaking out from behind stands full of various merchandise. But most had the good sense to get the hell out. As he gets around the final obstacle, a huge stack of fruit crates, he can see that the two that came in through the wall are in some kind of staring contest with a highly upset Yashima, and Kuno is desperately trying to assist a girl that is shivering and moaning on the ground, slowly spreading a pool of red on the floor from what must be a fairly serious injury.

Yashima, ever the level headed diplomat: "You can't have her, you wretched vultures. You will never have her. She will not become an unwilling pawn of your pathetic Ashikabi!"

Kuno is tearing her skirt into strips to try to get enough bandages together when she sees Bruce, and her eyes go wide and her face white. "No, no Bruce-san! You need to leave, run away!"

The grinning scythe wielder looks at Bruce as he is running towards the downed girl.

Mutsu taps his sheathed weapon against the ground, and a wall of concrete and rock rumble up from the floor of the warehouse in front of him, stretching a good forty feet in either direction and eight feet high.

"No. My master wants this one. Take yours and go. I have no desire for anyone to die today. Wasteful."

Another voice, a female voice that he can only assume is the scythe girl, has a different opinion.

"Keep them busy, Mutsu. The dumb bitch is bleeding out too fast. We need to make this quick, and I know just how to do that."

Bruce is running the length of the obstruction, when she drops in front of him, weapon already coming around to get in position for a strike. "Ha! Even your own Sekirei don't bother to come to your defense. This will be as easy as peeling a grape."

Bruce jumps back. He is already in a three way fight. Trying to deal with these enemy Sekirei, trying to keep the poor girl alive, and trying to keep the other guy from coming out and making the second goal all but impossible.

But he has been in this situation before. So he knows what is coming.

"Kuno, Yashima, get her to the Inn! Now, before she loses any more blood!"

he jumps back a second time, receiving despite his effects a cut across his belly that goes in about a quarter inch. Not enough to be serious, but enough to be bloody and painful. Very painful.

Too painful.

His anger wells up, his body responds. The scythe wielding maniac doesn't seem to have any idea what is going on, but as her eyes open wider and wider she seems to be of the impression that cutting him more will solve the problem.

The first hit hurts, but not as bad as it should.

The second he makes no effort to get out of the way, instead taking a step forward and reaching out, grabbing an arm and a bit of scythe handle in one ham sized fist, and Bruce can hear a low growl rumble up from the depths as he slowly crushes what he holds until bones and wood start snapping like toothpicks, and the woman's scream nearly drowns out the last things Bruce can make out before giving in entirely to the other guy. Kuno's sobs, and the giggling voice of Yashima as the two of them leap for an exit.

"You two are so very fucked."

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

She doesn't know what to do. This stupid human got big and green and grabbed her arm and "OH MY GOD MUTSU, HELP ME!" The snapping of her limb brings with it pain upon pain. The unyielding pressure forcing splintered bone into destroyed flesh. Then he shoves her away, almost as though he was swatting vermin, yet the force is enough to slam her into a wall ten feet up and eighty feet away with enough force to dent the corrugated tin. She falls to the ground a heap of mewling pain that starts trying to crawl to an exit on a ruined arm.

Mutsu leaps to the top of his concrete wall, look down at the green Ashikabi, and taps his sheath against the ground again, causing a fissure to open up beneath the hulk, and then slams it shut while the hulk is in free fall.

Upon hearing the stone below begin to pay the price for his hubris as the monster starts to smash it's way back to the surface, Mutsu decides that this particular mission is a wash. He leaps over to his companion. "Yomi. Will you live if I carry you?"

Her whimpers are accompanied by frantic nodding, so he picks her up. Her scream fades into the distance as the two leap out the hole they originally made just as a huge green hand appears, dragging the rest of the Hulk out of his temporary tomb.

Once clear, the Hulk is confused. There were people he hated here. Now they are gone. Now all that is here is tiny little scared people that will start to smell bad if her gets too close to them and their bowels loosen.

He leaps. Not quite straight up, a bit forward as well. His form pulverizes a large section of the roof as he passes through it without slowing.

He recognizes nothing.

That isn't new, but it is annoying.

He is in a city though, and the beast knows that by and large, cities are bad. Cities are full of people that shoot him. So when he leaps the second time he leaps inland. He can't see where the city stops. But if he goes inland far enough, he can usually find a place to rest.

Usually.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"Damn it Minaka, you don't want the thing here anyway, just let it go before it wrecks half the city!"

Takami Sahashi has had worse days, but nothing quite measures up to the sheer panic she is in now. She is the head geneticist at MBI. She works directly under the CEO of the company. She is on a first name basis with more than a hundred of the most powerful creatures on the planet and yet somehow, largely thanks to Minaka being some kind of psycho with a god complex, a lot of money, and too much time on his hands, she is constantly forced into a position where it seems the best thing she could do is beat her head against the wall.

It won't solve the problem, but the painkillers she would prescribe for herself when she was done would take her mind off of it for awhile.

"He can't leave, Takami, he has two little birds. He has to stay and play!"

"Bullshit, you used a laser on him last time. You want him dead, how is leaving so much worse?"

Minaka looks up from his tablet PC, smiling the smile of the cat with the canary. "He is welcome to die, if that will make him feel better. But he may not leave." His smile fades. "He has to stay like everybody else, the rules exist for a reason!"

Takami steps forward and snaps the tablet out of his hand, which causes him to look at her as if wounded and take out his phone. "What possible reason could you have for keeping an animated green wrecking ball in the city? Especially one that isn't a Sekirei!"

Minaka looks up at her over his phone, quirking an eyebrow. "Why does that make it worse?"

Takami slaps his hands, causing his phone to fly into a wall with what is to her a very satisfying crunch of broken plastics and glass.

"He doesn't have Tami! The power source the Sekirei use, that thing we have keyed them to genetically so that if they are attacked by another Sekirei and their life force dips beyond a certain point in comparison to their attacker, they will drop into a coma, and if they lose their Sekirei crest the same thing happens! The damn thing doesn't have it, so the Sekirei don't drop like they should! Two out of three times he has gotten into it with one of the Sekirei, the lightning twins and now Yomi, he has done far and away more damage than what it should have taken to put them out so I can pick them up and put them on life support for when we work the bugs out of this retarded bonding thing. He is gonna kill them, and because he isn't easy to keep an eye on and we can't pinpoint the dead Sekirei that have lost their crest we might never even know what happened to the poor things if he moves the body around. If all that weren't enough, the freak gives off some kind of background radiation that has a fifty fifty shot of screwing up the system just by being around, he doesn't even need to be the one hitting them if he is nearby."

Minaka looks curiously at Takami while he fiddles with his watch. "Is that why you thought we we were collecting the bodies? That is adorable, Takami. Truly. I wish you the best of luck." He brings his wrist up to his face, presses two more buttons, and then Takami hears an automated voice coming from the watch. "Target received."

"Really, Takami. Did you have to do that to my phone? I liked that phone. It is going to take me forever to find that background pic again."

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Another boring ass chopper patrol overt the eastern quad. That is what today was supposed to be. But no. Not today, he muses silently as the infrared image of a leaping freak bounds into his three mile view range. The directive is worded very specifically. His body is not to be allowed to leave the city.

Since the only options he has to enforce this are a nose mounted mini gun and a couple of racks of heat seeking missiles, the fact that the directive came to his unit makes the scope of the mission pretty clear.

"I'll keep us steady, you lock target. Upon hit we will gain altitude and reposition for a second strike."

His navigator and missile gunner offers a quick "Yes sir."

The missile launch happens without any problems, and the impact with explosions are enough to throw the thing back into the heart of the city.

"Sir, what the hell was that thing? I am running it by the updated list from last week and unless I am missing something, I don't think chuckles is on it. I don't think anything even remotely LIKE him is on it."

The pilot starts gaining altitude and makes it a point to back off a few miles. Hopefully by the time that thing hits the ground they can be out of sight.

He just isn't quite willing to believe that a couple of tank busters actually killed it.

"No clue, buddy. I have no idea what the fuck is going on anymore. Must be a day that ends in Y. Those ones always suck since I got this job."

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

After the first hop, Kuno and Yashima stop on a rooftop to try to put their patient together at least a little so the trip won't kill her. A moderately bad laceration on her belly is pretty bad, but the real problem is a deep slash to her thigh that seems to be spurting blood with her rapidly weakening heartbeat.

With a degree of cooperation that would seem to require years of training, the two bond sisters start binding her up as quickly as they can. They both look up when the roof of the building they just left explodes outward and the unstoppable fury that is their Ashikabi launches into the night as though from a cannon.

Two minutes to bind her up. Three to get her to the inn. Another one to three for explanations. Then they have to hope they can find him.

Though truth be told, Yashima considers while trying to fight back a fierce smile that would undoubtedly hurt Kuno's much more tender sensibilities, it isn't like it was gonna be hard to find him if he sticks to his standard protocol.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Bruce fights a losing battle to calm himself, regain some form of control, as the great green behemoth slowly gets back to it's feet. The path of destruction from his fall is easy to see, made worse perhaps by his flailing about trying to get a grip on something to catch himself with. He is currently standing somewhere in the upper floors of a skyscraper, having plowed through two taller buildings to get where he is before he lost enough momentum that he was finally able to stop.

The power is out, at least on the floor he is on. There are at least three of four people hiding behind a desk on the far side of the room, trying to all remain hidden without there being enough space and all of them trying to stifle coughs from the concrete dust that covers everything and billows through the air. Nothing seems to be attacking him at the moment. But where there are people, there are always people that attack him. He gets to his feet and walks to the hole he made when he smashed in the far wall. He is about to jump when he sees a flash of movement from above, and is then smacked across the face with a staff of some kind hard enough to fling him back into the wall behind him again. Dropping to one knee, with a hand on the floor and the other rubbing the angry line across his noggin. Through the one open eye above bared teeth, and over the rolling growl that is starting to rumble from his throat, he can hear the newcomer speak.

"Number sixteen, Toyatoma. I am under orders to bring you back to my Ashikabi. Will you go quietly or is this going to be as ugly as you are?"

From the depths of his psyche, through the hate and the rage, the confusion and the snippets of clarity intermingled with blinding pain from trying to process it all, Bruce weeps. Toyatoma, with her green hair, smooth green and gray skin pulsing with black veins, and over the top physique along with her seven foot height and glowing green eyes have made his worst fears of his lengthy hospital stay when he arrived into a reality.

With a roar that shatters windows hundreds of feet away, he charges. Her eyes go wide, but her smile widens if anything. Attempting to leap over him, she is met in the air when he makes his own hop, the two then beginning a decent forty stories down to the street below.

Using her superior agility, she manages to land on top as Bruce belly flops into the street, caving it in to the subway below. She attempts to dismount after giving him a solid thwack in the head again, so as to stay on the street level.

The green fist that closes over her leg puts an end to that, and she is drug below the street with him where the both of them find themselves on the edge of a commuter platform, the lights flickering and the people running, aside from one young woman who is screaming and staring down onto the tracks.

Bruce takes Toyatoma by the neck and with his abominably strong hands begins beating her reinforced frame against the concrete floor, the pressure on her leg and neck from his handholds quickly coming second in her pain to the results of being between the immovable object and the irresistible force. Seven slams later and she is barely hanging onto consciousness. Bruce hears, over the rage. Over the pain. Over the sound of powdering concrete and screeching re-bar. He hears a child crying. A woman screaming. A train whistle. A rumble of an approaching machine.

It takes a moment to put it all together, through the whirlwind of confusion that is his mind. But when he does, so does the Hulk.

A glance to the tracks sees a young girl, maybe eight or nine. Dark haired little moppet wearing a hello kitty outfit. Currently illuminated by the light of an oncoming train.

The screaming brakes shock him into motion as he leaps onto the tracks and picks the child up by her pretty pink backpack, gently (for him) tossing her to her mother. When he shifts his feet for the return trip though, something goes wrong.

The pain. The indescribable pain of the third rail as every nerve in his body begins to fry and his muscles all try to clench at once. The jerky movements as he tries to get control of his body again, and then the impact of the train on his body, flinging him away and down the track.

He smashes into the far wall, skips off it at an angle, and when his body lands on the tracks again is once again brought to extreme pain by the third rail for a moment before the muscle spasm it causes rips the track out of the floor and severs the line completely. Surrounded by sparks and feeling burned and tired, inside and out, he staggers to his feet and begins walking down the line in the dark. The occasional service light in the tunnel bearing witness to the creature it plays host to.

After a time, Bruce isn't sure how long, he manages to get the beast to sit on a service ledge and rest. The cold damp air is a soothing balm over the healing flesh of his body, so recently exposed to electrical current that would turn a normal person into a piece of charcoal. He shuts his eyes.

When he opens them, to his surprise, he is no longer alone. Kuno has curled up onto his lap, and his strong green arms are wrapped around her. Not far away, the silhouette of Yashima is easy to make out as she stands guard, her hammer over her shoulder and against the wall, with her leaning against the monstrous thing.

With them here, and the peace it brings, Bruce can feel the Hulk releasing its grip. The green begins to bleach out of his flesh and his limbs shrink slowly to normal size. A minute later, Kuno is smiling up at him, and softly says: "Bruce-san, you are back with us. We worried when you were gone so long."

Bruce just looks at her for a moment. Then to Yashima, who must have heard something as she is walking back with a smile on her face.

"I am not sure I ever really left. I don't know if it is the bond, or what. But I don't think the Hulk would ever hurt you two. I got a chance to listen to him a little bit a minute ago. To feel what he felt. Not the easiest thing, he is usually really hard to make out. But for a change he was relatively calm. He cares about you two as much as I do. I..." Bruce struggles for a minute as he tries to come up with a way to explain how unusual that is. "I am not sure what the future for me holds, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that all of me wants you two in it. I don't know if I can properly explain how good that makes me feel. Or how terrifying it is."

The two don't really know how to respond to this, so they fall back on offering and getting hugs from their Ashikabi.

"How is the girl?"

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Upon arrival at the house the two carry the girl to their room while screaming for Chiho to bring the medical supplies from her illness. Within moments, Uzume, Chiho, Miya, Kuno, and Yashima are all surrounding the dying girl. Her blood soaked bandages and clothing is expertly cut away by Miya, stitches and new bandages are put together in minutes by Uzume. After ten minutes though, with her heartbeat becoming more and more erratic, and her skin cold to the touch, it is becoming obvious what is going to happen.

Then her eyes open. Barely enough to see out of. But they do. She looks at them all in turn, these people that are trying so desperately to save her life. The oldest, Miya. Who is trying to be stoic while wearing her blood all over her otherwise beautiful temple clothes. Uzume, the veiled one who is even now checking her bandages as though she could find the one that was being rude enough to let her die.

Yashima and Kuno, the brave ones who came to her rescue, even risking their own promised one to keep her safe. To get her well. Too bad it seems that she was going to let them down. Living might have been nice.

Then her eyes ease past those two to the one that is sitting in the back. The one whose presence had made her open her eyes. The one who has tears streaming down her face and is silently mouthing prayers for her to recover. Finally she opens her mouth to speak, a wry smile crossing her lips despite the grimace of pain.

"At least I got a chance to meet my Ashikabi before the end. Thank you for trying."

Then her eyes drift slowly shut, and the shivers that had wracked her frame stop.

Chiho looks up at Uzume, her eyes widening. Uzume looks back at her, sees her indecision, and yells.

"Chiho, do it. I can share!"

Chiho stumbles forward the three feet, and places her lips gently, but firmly, against the young girls.

The bright flash of light from below tells everyone that the deed is done, though the spectral wings aren't seen as they go through the floor. The girl's eyes flash open, the green withing green eyes slowly spreading across their surface. Then she falls back onto the bed and lays still.

Chiho is still crying a she turns to Miya, who is taking the girls pulse. "Is she? Is she OK?"

Miya looks up after a moment. "She lost a lot of blood, Chiho. I can't see the future, but I can tell you that right now her pulse is strong and seems to be getting stronger. Whatever Bruce-san has done to you all it seems powerful, of that there can be no doubt.

This seems to be the reminder that Kuno and Yashima need as they both begin to alternate stammering out an explanation as to what exactly happened here, and then make their way to the door. The girl isn't the only one that needed help right now.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"And that is what happened, Bruce-san." Kuno finishes the explanation.

Yashima glances up from staring at her Ashikabi for a moment. "What about the other bit?"

Kuno gives Yashima a dirty look. "Bruce-san doesn't need to know about that. It would only upset him."

Bruce puts his finger over Kuno's mouth and turns to Yashima. "What other bit?

Yashima gives Kuno a somewhat apologetic look. "The bit that happened when we got to the subway station you were last at. It went down like this..."

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The two were listening to a police radio they had picked up during their little shopping trip. Knowing where disturbances were seemed like it might be important given who their Ashikabi was, and it was apparently already paying dividends. After listening for just a couple of minutes, they begin leaping from rooftop to rooftop on their way to a specific subway station where someone was calling for back up to deal with a pair of green giants beating the hell out of each other.

By the time they arrive, the street level entrance is crawling with MBI personnel. The two decide to use a convenient Bruce shaped hole in the street to get down there. When they do, the fall into a bit of trouble.

The Sekirei on the floor has managed to lean herself against a wall, still sitting, and collect her metal staff. The blood on her face and the dirty, disheveled, and shredded nature of her clothing would seem to indicate that she was the bludgeon used to destroy a good sized chunk of the concrete. The second is also against the wall, but standing, and looks pristine in her two tone one piece and her long armored boots. To the shock of Yashima and Kuno, they both have grayish green skin and bright green eyes. The sitting one stands at their arrival. "Well look here, Katsuragi. Some new toys to play with."

The other, a little smaller but still a well built six foot tall, responds. "Are you sure? These two were not our mission objective, Toyatoma. I have no wish to be punished again."

"Look again, Kat. Look at their eyes."

Yashima holds her hammer in front of her with both hands, while Kuno slides just behind her and to the right.

"Oh, yeah. I see. The eyes. Well, I guess if it can't be helped."

The dirtied up one turns to talk to Yashima. "Our Ashikabi has decided that anybody involved with your Ashikabi needs to be removed from the plan. Sorry about this."

Yashima flips her hammer once, as though it were a baton. "We are just here to find our Ashikabi. Let us go our own way and nobody needs to die today."

Toyatoma is apparently unwilling to negotiate, and pushes off from the wall in a lightning fast jab from her staff at Yashima's face. The block using the head of the hammer is easy enough, and the swing to discourage the second from going after Kuno doesn't connect, but does the job of buying a couple seconds.

Then the song starts.

Her piercing wail is directed at Toyatoma, but there is plenty of bleed over to Katsuragi. They both feel the strength in their limbs diminish, and their vision go hazy. Double, and even triple vision. After images, seeing spots, and phantom pains assault them. Time seems to do funny things, sometimes speeding up, and sometimes slowing down. Through the kaleidoscope of imagery and sound, Toyatoma can see the hammer on a collision course with her. She knows she has to move. But somehow, her speed has left her. Her strength is gone. He eyes widen as she can barely make out the white teeth of Yashima's smirk as the blow lands.

It was an upward strike, swung behind her and using the initial downward momentum to build speed before then powering through the upward motion for the connection. The hammer hits with the kinetic energy of a pair of dump trucks hitting head on going a hundred miles an hour, focused on her gut just below her breasts.

It is only her Hulk reinforced body that keeps it from simply coming apart. Multiple snaps, like firecrackers, are heard as the floating ribs are pulverized trying to defend her organs. Her whole body is then thrown upwards into the reinforced concrete ceiling, where the only thing that stops her neck breaking is that the angle of flight causes her collarbone to instead be the one that is sacrificed in the name of survival. She falls to the ground a whimpering sack of meat and shattered bone. Kat sees this and decides that, maybe this once the punishment might be preferable. Staggering to her bond mate through the hellscape and weakness that is now focused on her, she ignores the pained protests, throws her over a shoulder, picks up her staff, and begins to run up the stairs to the street at her best speed, occasionally slamming into walls in her confusion. Praying that these two don't follow them.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Bruce nods after the explanation of events. "Well, I am sorry you had to deal with that because of me. But I am grateful you were both OK."

Kuno shakes her head. "It isn't because of you that we had to deal with it. We would have had to fight them eventually anyway. It is because of you that we were able to deal with it, and we are so grateful to you for this. So very grateful."

Yashima just nods. "Can we go home now? I am getting kinda hungry."

Bruce gives the two a somewhat pained look. "I don't suppose anybody thought to bring me a change of clothes?"


End file.
